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As soon as the guests had all been escorted out of the room to depart for their respective homes , servants swarmed through once again and removed the remains of the meal until the place was spotless again . The emperor , and the six of us who were left , were kept supplied with wine , since the emperor retained his glass and apparently wanted it kept full , though he didn 't drink it very fast . I sipped at my glass ; after all , I was sitting directly across from the emperor , I was expected to do the same as he did . It was bitter and strong . I didn 't like it . It was all I could do not to make a face every time I tasted it . ( This is a small example of how ignorant I was of my magic . I could have turned the wine into water and simply colored it differently , but I didn 't think of that ) . While the servants were bustling around , the emperor sat in his chair across from my mother in silence . When the servants were finished , the man who was apparently their manager , bowed to the emperor , and then they all were gone . The emperor sat there for a long time just looking at the three of us . Then he looked directly at me and spoke with a voice that was as smooth and calm as his bearing . " Your mother has tried to explain to me how it is that you do what you do , but it 's apparent that she has little or no understanding of it herself and so had difficulty speaking of it . Could you perhaps do better ? " I sat up straighter and tried to explain much as Durmas had tried to explain it to me . " My magic is an elemental magic . I can manipulate the elements around me . The four major elements are earth , air , fire and water . Most of what I do deals with those four elements , either one , or more often , all of them . " " You say you manipulate the elements around you . How do you do that ? " he asked , as he leaned forward on his elbows . I don 't know how it happens exactly , but what I do is draw from the elements around me to make something I need , or simply move that element to a different location . The more unnatural the task , the more enePosted by When I walked into the grand dining hall , I was amazed . There must have been hundreds of people in attendance and they all were dressed in the highest fashion . Well , I guess it was the highest fashion ; I found it all to be quite outlandish . Fortunately , what the seneschal selected for us to wear had no feathers or ruffles ; of course , I think Pip may have had something to do with that . Just as I had been instructed , nobody here was talking with anyone else here , so aside from the entertainment , which took the form of music and acrobatic dancing , the room was very quiet . Then I noticed a tall slender man enter the room . He was younger than I expected , somewhere between thirty - five and forty I would guess , and dressed in somber black flowing robes . At each shoulder was a guard in full armor . No matter what the emperor did or where he went , they never strayed more than two feet from his elbow and their eyes were constantly roaming , searching for the smallest possible danger . There were other guards around too who were never more than ten paces away . I 'm sure there were others as well ; after all , he was the emperor . The emperor himself passed among the people with somber dignity and seemed to speak to almost everyone there . He didn 't speak to me or my friends so there were probably others who didn 't receive his attention . As he passed through the people , he had a brief conversation with those he chose , and then , most of the time he paired them off with someone else of his choice . These people then began to talk to each other . Occasionally , in the case of a man being paired off with a woman , they would dance to the music . In my opinion , it wasn 't really dancing music , so this only happened a couple times . Finally , when the emperor felt that he had spent enough time mingling , he headed for the head table and his seat . Once comfortably arranged with his ever - present guards at his elbows , he waved his hand . Someone must have been waiting for the signal because a flood of servants entered the room and escorted people Posted by By the time we docked , most of the repairs had been completed . I think all they had left to do was replace some of the larger components and then the ship had to pass some sort of inspection before it could be declared space worthy again . It felt strange as our impromptu family disbursed , knowing it was highly unlikely that we would ever see each other again , but we all knew it was inevitable . Perhaps some of us would remain in contact . We all had each other 's names and addresses by now . Dad hired a private car and we went directly to the emperor 's complex . I was amazed that the complex was the size of a major city all by itself . Gaining access was difficult to say the least , which is appropriate I guess , but I found it irritating . I was thankful I had the distraction of helping Colin adjust to full gravity . Most of the work had already been done . All that remained was for him to get used to it and build up his strength and endurance a little more ; he tired rather easily . It was almost six weeks before we gained an audience with the assistant of an undersecretary of some other underling 's underling of the emperor , but it was a start , and mother was excited about it . Apparently , our story gained someone 's interest because , as short as two weeks later , we were summoned to see an assistant of the undersecretary of the emperor himself . Mother purposefully kept the unusual details of our situation extremely vague , but the report caught the ear of the emperor nonetheless and apparently , it caught his interest . Three days later , he sent for my parents . A private audience with the emperor was just what my mother had hoped for . I went along , but I wasn 't allowed into the meeting . Several hours later , an assistant suggested I return to my apartment . The emperor wasn 't going to see me today , and he was far from finished with my parents ; there was no point in my remaining any longer . I returned to the apartment I shared with Pip , Georgy and Colin . I tried to interest myself in the movie on the video screen , but I had mPosted by Repair crews aboard tug ships appeared two days later and we were under way again though it would be sub - light all the way . I clawed my way out of my seat as soon as they installed the parts that held the force field over the port . Nobody understood how things had been working , but they had little reason to question me , for which I was thankful . I was also thankful that they hadn 't repaired the gravity plating yet either , because I 'm not so sure that I could have walked down the stairs to my seat . It was all I could do to shuck the space suit I 'd been wearing . Colin was the first to see me drifting down into the cabin and was at my side immediately . " What happened to you ? You look like the living dead . " " Great , what 'll my mother think ? Where is she anyway ? " Before I let myself relax into my seat , I said , " Colin , I 'm going to need your help and Georgy 's too . I 'm going to sleep for a while , probably a long time . I 'm going to need you guys to take care of me . You 'll have to make me eat and I 'll need to eat a lot . Wake me about every four hours . I can 't think of anything else ; I 'm too tired . " " We 'll take care of you Liam ; don 't worry , " said Colin . " And Liam , thanks . For what you did for me , thanks . " I think I smiled . I was glad he hadn 't been scared away . " My pleasure . Glad I could help . Don 't let mom get too upset . This 'll scare her - a lot I think . She 'll want to fuss . Won 't do any good . " My sentences were getting shorter and I was rambling . I missed Colin getting me into my seat ; I just suddenly found myself there , and then I fell asleep . It was such a relief just to turn off for a while . They told me it was six days while I mechanically consumed whatever was placed in front of me before I said anything . Apparently , I asked for an apple . Colin told me I 'd have to make it since there wasn 't any in the galley . All I remember is someone telling me ' I 'd have to make it ' . I didn 't remember what I was supposed to make . I don 't know if I even tried . It Posted by It was taking me hours to bring us to a relative stop and I was feeling the drain . Shortly before we achieved it , we were hailed by another ship . " Hail , passenger liner Bradshaw One . Stand to and prepare to be boarded . " " This is the Bradshaw One , " I replied . " We have no engines . I estimate I won 't be able to come to a full halt for at least another hour . Who is this ? " " If you don 't have any engines ; how are you slowing your motion ? " " I 'm working on it . Identify yourself , " I said again . I was tired and getting irritable . " That must be a pirate ship , " said my companion . " Otherwise , they would have identified themselves with the first thing they said . We 're sitting ducks . " A note of panic was showing in his voice , but I didn 't have time for that . " No , we 're not , " I replied . " Tell me what to do . " " What do you mean , ' tell you what to do ' ; what can we do ? We don 't have any engines , so we can 't run , and we don 't have any guns , so we can 't fight . Like I said , we 're sitting ducks . " I continued sending out our distressed call , and in the process , I felt them trying to jam the signal . In a moment of irritability , I reached out and took their jamming equipment . Let them try to figure that out when they tried to fix it . I was starving . It was tempting to take what I needed directly from our unwanted visitors , but I still wasn 't sure they were pirates . I also was determined not to kill again . I didn 't remember the one time I did , and I had never tried to , but the very thought of sucking the life out of someone to feed my hunger was repulsive . In an effort to distract myself from my hunger , I turned my eyes in to the cabins again . The people in the common cabin were still safely buckled into their seats , and they were being tended and comforted by the stewards as well as Colin . The view in the first class cabin wasn 't nearly so quiet and there was ample evidence why . There were bodies floating around everywhere , gruesome evidence of why it was important to strap in bePosted by I rose to return to my seat and saw Colin coming out of the bathroom , and then there was an explosion . The gravity plating ceased to function and the engines that had become so much a part of our lives that they had ceased to exist for us , suddenly went silent . All I remember at the time was total pandemonium . People were screaming . The stewards were trying to restore order but were having little success . I had to get upstairs . I had no idea why , but I knew I just had to go . I yelled at Colin over the ruckus . " Colin , help get these people back into their seat . You 're good at this . I 'm counting on you . " I don 't know why I said that , but it seemed to galvanize him into action . I kicked off toward the stairs with somewhat less grace . My mother snagged my arm . " Where are you going ? You have to buckle into your seat before we slow down any further . " Her grip sent us both careening out of control in off the wall directions ( literally ) . Colin caught my mother and propelled her safely into her seat and then caught a child and headed in another direction with it . I didn 't catch what he said but I heard the kid giggle . With an utterly graceless bounce off the ceiling and then the wall , I managed to find the stairs and head up to the first class level . The stewards were having less luck here . Everyone was shouting over each other , demanding an explanation immediately . The stewards had no answers to offer so the passengers continued to yell . Very few of them were willing to do as the stewards were telling them . I continued past this floor and on up to the operations deck unhindered and unnoticed . Huddled in a corner near the door to the cockpit , was a young officer . I knelt down by him and asked , " What happened here ? " When he didn 't answer , I shook one of his shoulders and asked again . Finally , after a light slap on the face he took notice of me . " What did you say ? " Then he realized that I had to be one of the passengers . " What are you doing here ? " " I 'm here to help , " I said . " Tell me what happPosted by There is an old expression I 've heard from time to time that says ' my , how time flies when you 're having fun ' . I was reminded of the passage of time though , when I overheard my mother asking Colin , " Have you spoken to your father ? I 'm sure he would love to hear about your progress . " " Father doesn 't know where I am and I can 't tell him , " replied Colin . " You see the lieutenant governor was going to have me arrested for that last fight . There aren 't any jails on space stations or asteroids ; it was a death sentence for someone like me . Liam said he thought he could help me . What could I lose by trying ? I never would have imagined doing what I 'm doing now , and I really want to thank you people for lending me something to wear . Anyway , if I call father ; he 'll have to turn me in . " That was really something ; the only people in our ' family ' who weren 't wanted by the authorities were Pip and Georgy . Course if anyone discovered that they were with us , they could be added to the list easily enough . I had been putting off telling Colin what I had been doing to him . I just didn 't know how to do it . I liked him a lot and I didn 't want to scare him away , but he was starting to think it was some miracle and I couldn 't let him believe that . Finally , the day came when Colin asked me what it was that I had done and I couldn 't put it off any longer . He weighed twice as much now than he had when I first met him . He knew that the gravity plating was normal for this ship and I think he suspected that it had never been lightened for him as I said it had . Perhaps they would have if he were a first class passenger . Maybe , if they thought he really was my mom 's son and if they knew who she really was , but no . He thought it had to be something I was putting in his food . By coincidence , I was always handing him his food . We were just finishing our daily sparring match one day when he said , " It feels so wonderful to be taxing my muscles and know that it 's not just to breathe or walk across the rooPosted by As we stood in line to board the ship , the governor 's son came up to me and pulled me aside . " Do you still think you can help me ? " " I think I can , and I 'm willing to try . I don 't know if I 'll succeed though . I can 't promise that . " He shifted his feet and looked longingly at the gangplank then he looked back the way he had come . There was a pair of guards there , but I have no idea whether that influenced his decision or not . " All right , I 'll try it . I don 't want to live like this any more . " We stepped back in line and I said , " Mom , meet my brother . . . . " " Colin , " he supplied . Mom looked at us in stunned surprise , but then she smiled . " You really must find some other way to make friends , Liam . Beating them up first is just . . . bad taste . " We all had to laugh , even Colin laughed about it when I told him about my other three friends . Make no mistake , laughing hurt , but we did it anyway , carefully . " I took the ticket from my mother and handed it to the ticket collector . There was a little problem there since our ticket claimed six people and their records said that we were a party of five , but when we all handed over our IDs , which , with another bit of slight - of - hand , confirmed what our ticket said , they let us pass . Someone had made a mistake somewhere ; they would investigate it through the proper channels but they couldn 't afford to delay us from our flight . I 'm sure Colin thought we had second - guessed him and had things changed in advance , but he never asked about it . First class passengers got staterooms . Common class passengers all sat in padded seats , not unlike fat recliners , arranged four wide in rows around the common room on the lower level . That seat was where we would live for the duration of our trip . We would sleep there and sit there whenever we did those things , and there was a large compartment overhead for our luggage . There was a common bathroom at the back of the compartment where we could shower if we wanted , and a small cafeteria where we could eat our mealPosted by I didn 't come out of my room again until the next day when I had to go get my teeth fixed . We were all sitting in the cafeteria afterward when the governor came in with his son in tow . When I say he was ' in tow ' , I mean the governor had him by the scruff of his neck . He came up to our table and placed his son so that he faced me most directly , then he gave him a shake . I winced along with him ; that little shake had to have hurt since the whole side of his face was purple . " I 'm sorry , " he said , through clenched teeth . " It won 't happen again . " I wasn 't too sure I believed him . Sure , he wasn 't likely to challenge me again , but then again , I wasn 't likely to pass through this space station again . I looked at his resentful expression and suddenly had an insight into the reason behind it . I might regret this , but I thought I aught to try . I got to my feet and motioned him to follow me . When we reached a spot where no one could overhear us , I asked , " Why don 't you come with us ? You look like you could use a change of scenery . " He looked at me in disbelief . " What makes you think I want anything more to do with you ? " " Suit yourself , " I said . I tried . I started back to my seat . " You 're going to Earth , " he said to my back . " I can 't go there . I can 't even go to most asteroid colonies . I have enough trouble walking the strip here . " I turned back to him and looked at his too thin form more closely . " I think I can help you . . . if you 're willing to try . " He scoffed . I expected that . " You can 't help me ; not unless you can give me a whole new body . Dad has taken me to so many doctors , I 've lost count , and they all say I 'll never be comfortable under gravity . There 's a reason why it 's against the law to give birth to children anywhere other than on a main planet , and for children to spend no more than one year in five in space until they 're teenagers . My mother ran away with a miner before I was born . By the time father found her on some unnamed little pebble , I was Posted by By the time we reached the hatch at the top of the ladder , we were climbing using only our arms and only touching every few rungs to keep us propelled upward . Before entering the now open hatch , Skinny Dude opened a cubby , drew out two long staffs and propelled them ahead of us . Once he and I had followed them , the hatch was closed , leaving only him and me in the huge empty space that could only be the center of the station . I 've seen these puzzles where there is a collection of about ten sticks all at different angles held in place by strings laced across the ends of the sticks ; in the center was a glass ball . The point of the puzzle was to remove the ball by sliding the sticks in the right direction along the strings . I felt like we were inside that ball but there was no glass between the girders and us . As soon as my eyes had assessed my surroundings and had come back to him , he spoke . " You 're going to fight me for the right to exist on my strip and only I will decide when the fight is over . " He launched one of the staffs at me . I recognized the move and deflected it without loosing the staff in this weightlessness . I hadn 't pitted myself against Master Larak and learned nothing in all those months . Skinny Dude might be better at the ' no gravity ' thing , but I did know how to handle a staff . It looked like he was going to use a style I wasn 't familiar with though . For my friends and my teachers , a staff had simply been an over long club , but I didn 't have the weight to do quite the same thing and had been forced to modify my style accordingly . My hands could therefore be most anywhere on a staff , but seldom directly in the center . With a deft kick off one of the girders , my adversary launched at me with a vicious swing . It was supposed to connect with my head . I wasn 't entirely successful in twisting out of the way , and though he missed my head by no more than a hair , the other end of his staff connected with my shin . I 'm certain that if the blow had landed under gravity , my leg would be brokenPosted by Late wasn 't quite the word for it . When I came down into the common room , lunch was in full swing and my plate was waiting for me . I wasn 't quite awake enough to begin worrying yet , so my appetite raged unhindered . Pip just smiled , but my parents began to grow concerned as I put away my third plate of food . They made no comment though , and waited until I was finished before speaking . " We have come to a decision , " said my father , after the waitress had removed our plates and brought us our drinks . Pip had ordered a brandy , my parents each had a glass of white wine , but Georgy and I had ice water . My experience with alcohol had not been too favorable yet . " We have decided to take our case directly to the emperor . " I nearly choked on my water . " Won 't they be expecting us to do something like that ? They 'll find us . " " That 's a possibility , but I 'm hoping they won 't be looking in that direction at all . If we can present our case to the emperor before we 're hauled in as criminals , it will look a lot better for us . It 'll make us appear more the victim in this . We 'll have to present the entire case , Liam , which means that you 'll have to show the emperor some of what you can do . The man isn 't stupid ; he knows what kind of man the baron was . We 'll have the entire trip to plan what to say and do in more detail . " I groaned . " Dad , you 're talking six to eight months of faster than light travel . What if . . . what if something goes wrong ? I dealt with the PTS boost all right this time , but this is new . What if . . . . " " If you can handle PTS boost , you can handle this , " dad said . " Don 't you remember when we made the trip last time ? It 's unpleasant , but not nearly as drastic as cryo - sleep . I 'll coach you through it before we start and make sure you know exactly what to expect . " I groaned again and looked from face to face . " Are you sure this is the best thing ? Not that I want to spend the rest of my life on the run , but this seems like jumping out of the frying pan and intoPosted by Next to sit at my table was a girl I had never seen before . Before I could ask her what she wanted , three guards entered the inn . At first , I thought that guy who tried to take my dad 's sword might have sent them , but their words were an indication of something much worse . " We 're looking for a man , a woman and a sixteen year old kid . Has anyone in here seen anything like that ? " one of them asked loud enough for everyone to hear . I tossed the rest of my drink back and gasped as fire rushed back up my throat . Getting no response to their question , the guards decided to apply a little pressure . They went to every table and looked each occupant closely in the eye , asking their question again . When one of them reached my table , and leaned on it , I forced myself to look him directly in the eyes . " You look like you might be about the right age . You staying here by yourself , are you ? " I showed him my key . The girl scooted her chair closer to me and put her hand on my arm as if for security . " Why are you looking for these people ? " I asked . The man reared his head up and glared at me . " I 'm the one asking the questions here . " Then he glanced at the girl and moved on to the next table . When they went upstairs , I stepped outside . The girl clung to my arm . I let her because she would make me appear older than sixteen . Perhaps the guards thought she was my wife . Plus , if they found my parents up there , I could interfere with them out here in the dark a lot easier than in the inn where there would be far too many witnesses . As I leaned against the building , the girl wrapped herself around my arm and started to rub her leg against me . " What are you doing ? " I asked . I almost wanted to push her away . " You looked like you could use some company , " she said . Oh my god , I had a hooker . What do I do now ? " I 'm afraid you 're mistaken , " I said , as I diverted her hand from going down my pants . She had succeeded in getting my shirt unbuckled by the time the guards left the building . They were alone . The man who had sPosted by My sword was sheathed but my hand rested on my dagger at my back , ready to draw it in a moment should I need to . Mom and dad followed close behind me . He led us through many winding back alleys with many twists and turns along the way . He also bought us several short rides on assorted transportation systems going different directions . As I watched him , I felt certain that he was doing his best to throw off anyone who might have thought to try to follow us . Finally he led us into an inn not far from the docks and then up to a room on the second floor . Pip was sitting there at a small table looking quite used and much abused . My guide went and stood behind him and I went forward to clasp his hand with relief . " Pip , I thought you were dead . They told me they had discarded your box at the docks . " " They did . In fact , they discarded me among the freight almost at once . If it weren 't for Georgy here , I 'd be dead for sure . Speaking of which , I think we are due for a few introductions . " He indicated the young man who stood at his shoulder . " This is my nephew , Georgy . I enlisted his help as possible backup in case something happened to me , or we got separated , and it 's a good thing I did . You , McTavish , weren 't supposed to spot him or even notice him unless he was needed , but I thought your reactions would be much better if I didn 't tell you otherwise . " Then he turned his eyes on my parents . " And you , Mr . and Mrs . McTavish , I 'm glad you 're safe , but I think you should do a little introducing of your own . I think you owe your son an explanation . " I was surprised . I looked at my parents . " What does that mean ? " My mother seemed to wilt and my father guided her over to the bed and sat down with her , but he didn 't offer to speak for her . While I watched my mother wrestle with herself , Pip whispered something to his nephew who left the room quietly . " Liam , " mom began with difficulty , " We . . . your father and I . . . were in no real danger . The baron wouldn 't dare . You see . . . he 's my fathPosted by One thing I learned from my teachers was to think about surprising events after you are safe and have time to think about them . I whirled around , grabbed my parents by the arms and started to run , but soon realized that my mother wasn 't capable of running . She was too stunned to do more than stumble along , so I scooped her up in my arms , thankful that she was a small woman . My father might have been able to do it too , he was bigger than me , but all his time at the table writing his papers couldn 't compare to what I had been doing for the last near year ( I don 't even want to count my time in that box ) . My magic bolstered my strength and energy , but it didn 't tell me where to go . As soon as I was out of that room , I was hopelessly lost . My father , however , had no such problem . As soon as we were in the hall , he took the lead . " This way , " he said , and waved me after him . Up until now , I always thought of my father as some kind of a dorky nerd , but right now , I would have followed him into the gates of hell . We rounded several corners and descended two flights of stairs before we went through a door leading outside . Dad led me around behind some other building and up to a small door located in a massive brick wall . I put mother down while father searched for something . She was crying now , though she was trying not to make any noise with it . " Don 't you remember , Lloyd ? Six bricks up and two over " ( sniff ) . " It 's on the right hand side . " He went to the appropriate spot and a brick slid sideways at his touch . He moved something inside the small hole and the door came ajar . He closed the brick and ushered us through the door . We were just rounding a corner that would lead us down into the city when we came face to face with someone I wasn 't happy to see ; it was the shadow we had acquired at the mining colony . I didn 't take the time to analyze his reaction to finding me here . I drew my sword , and then pulled him helplessly forward into its point . " Pip sent me , " he gasped hastily before my point piercPosted by When we made it back to where we started from , my box was still there though closed again . My ' guide ' propelled me over toward the only other occupants of the room with a shove . My parents hugged me desperately . My mother was sobbing openly and my dad looked like he just might join her any second now . Through her tears , mom said , " Oh , Liam , what are you doing here ? We thought you would be safe on that planet . We thought you wouldn 't be able to leave . We thought you couldn 't . " " I came looking for you . I got worried when I didn 't hear from you . " Then I whispered in her ear in case we were being listened to . " F . Y . I . mom , there 's another man with me , or at least I hope he 's still with me . The story is that you hired him to baby - sit me before you left . He 's a short man with light hair that 's turning gray . He has a mustache and his name is Pip ; have you seen him ? " and then louder again . " What 's going on here ? " Both my parents shook their heads imperceptibly about Pip and then tried to answer my question . " My last report about the magic that man told us about , I didn 't believe it until after we reached that mining colony , " started my father . " I 'm sure my attitude was clear in my report and I didn 't bother to change it after you convinced me otherwise , but someone believed it . When they took us , they were after you . Baron Vladimir was furious when they brought us here and you weren 't with us . Now that you 're here , I don 't know what he 'll do . " " Listen , mom , dad , whatever he does , I can handle it . " I really wasn 't as sure about that as I managed to sound , but they didn 't need to know that ; they were scared enough . " So don 't worry . I need to know where they 've taken Pip , so I 'm going to have to let them do whatever they 're going to do until I find that out . " I looked them both intently in the eyes . " Don 't worry . I 'll get us out of here . " Mom looked dubious and dad was trying his best not to . " Well , well , well . Such a happy family reunion , " sPosted by I grew up a rancher 's daughter hoping to inherit the ranch and run a riding school for city kids . However , my brother bought the ranch from our parents in order to avoid an inheritance tax and I ended up joining the army , marrying my fisherman husband and moving to the wilderness of Alaska where I raised two wonderful boys . One of them gave me an old laptop computer and now I 'm a published author . Go figure . My Obsession is all things writing . I 've written two dozen books ranging in length from 6 pages to over 1100 pages . I 'll post a different sample each week as the mood pulls me . Kinda depends on which character wants to show off at the time . But keep an eye pealed - once in a while there 's something else entirely . |
It 's been a while , so I thought I 'd update what Chris has been doing lately . His vocabulary grows daily , even if most of the words are still understandable only to us . He knows his nose ( his current favorite - if you walked in the door the first thing he 'd do is say " nose " and point to his nose ) , mouth , tongue ( added this week ) , ears , toes and feet . We 're avoiding eyes . Oh yeah , and he knows belly button ( also a big hit ) . He 'll say all of those , some better than others . Old standbys - dog , mama , dada , cat ( ta ) , duck , bird , balloon , bear , book , ba ( bottle ) , please , more , done . Now he says " moo " for a cow , orange , water ( sounds a bit like " that " ) . He points to get his message across . Physically , his coordination is getting better , so he finally runs around without falling ( too often ) . He loves to dance ( to anything that resembles a beat ) . And he doesn 't just sway like his dad and I do , he bounces up and down and gets his arms into it . He can get on and off the new horse his Grampa and Grammy Lin got him for Christmas . His new favorite book is Goodnight Gorilla . On the front cover there 's a gorilla saying " shhh " with his finger over his mouth . Now if you ask Chris " What does the gorilla say ? " he puts one finger over his mouth and says " shhhhh . " It 's pretty cute - hopefully we 're not scarring him to badly ! And my personal favorite , he has started to show a real taste for flavor . He LOVES chicken tikka masala ( and just about any other Indian food we have given him ) . Last night he ate half a burrito ( complete with a quite spicy salsa , beans , guacamole , rice , chicken , potatoes and zucchini ) . He would only eat the bland Thanksgiving food if we gave him a tart cranberry - orange relish with it ( cranberries and an orange - peel and all - in a blender ) . Today we got our shipment of grapefruit from John 's parents for Christmas , Chris loves them . Maybe we can transition him from his 4 clementines a day to include some grapefruit . He 's still just a happy little boy . We took him to the mall today and he just loves seeing all the peoPosted by Chris spent the afternoon at Grammy 's house so I could do some work . Only problem is that I haven 't yet gotten the green light on my next project for work , so I had no work to do . Instead , I went to Lowe 's for mini blinds and weather stripping stuff , to Shaw 's for diapers and dinner stuff , came home , made dinner , paid the bills ( and sorted through about 3 weeks of mail to do so ) , submitted my hours for work , and cleaned the kitchen . That took 4 hours . Now dinner 's basically ready , and I 'm just waiting for my mom , Paul and Chris to come eat . I 'm not sure what to do with myself . . . I actually have a free minute . Of course , there 's plenty of laundry covering my bed , but I don 't feel like tackling that just yet . Maybe I 'll get there when I put Chris to bed . I think I 'm starting to feel a little better . I 'm still tired , but a few days ago I wasn 't moving off the couch . Chris has taken to blowing kisses . He 's been kissing people ( and the air in the direction of people ) for a month or so now . Just recently , he 's figured out to blow kisses with his hand . So now my " baby " is walking up the the stairs ( holding the railing , with Dad right below ) , stopping on each step to blow another kiss goodnight to me . What a love . Kiddo also seems to have gotten Fifth Disease . It 's not a problem for kids , and doesn 't seem to bug him one bit . But I 'm pregnant , and it could be a problem for the baby . Let 's hope not ! I started my new job last week with a 2 day stint in Pittsfield . So far , so good . Chris did fine without me ( with the help of Dad and Grammy ) , but he did fight his nap enough for me to decide he must 've missed me . Meanwhile , I love my job . We 're working with the city and school district in Pittsfield to help them create a new school system that can be the center of their community for years to come . Exactly what I want to do ! The guy I work for does this for cities all over the country ( and the world , actually ) . Who knew someone was doing exactly what I want to do . Moreover , who would 've thought I could 've gotten the job the way I did ? Did I write about that ? I don 't remember . I applied for the full time job posting , and at the interview I explained I wanted to work part time . Well , a few emails and phone calls later , and I 'm working about 10 hrs / week for him and getting paid hourly to do something I love . I 'm pretty excited - it 's absolutely perfect for me ! So things are definitely getting better . As much as I want to be home with Chris , I needed something like this to work on too . Now I feel like I have my cake and I 'm eating it too . I get to be a " stay at home mom " and work 10 hrs a week , mainly from home ( with some travel ) , on my dream job . How did I get that lucky ? So he 's officially ONE YEAR OLD today . Wow . It 's pretty amazing . We just got back from the doctor for his 1 yr physical . He had fun . The doctor tried to explain to him that kids aren 't supposed to like the doctor 's office so much . He ran in circles and squealed . The doctor gave him a clean bill of health . We 're still unsure about the egg allergy , but we 're just avoiding eggs for now . He can officially face forward in the car , and he can eat honey . Woohoo ! The doctor said he was the friendliest one year old she has seen in a long time . Then the nurse came and gave him shots . He screamed for maybe 5 seconds , and then smiled and waved goodbye to her . I love what a sweetie he is . So , he 's one . He can run , clap , wave , kiss , follow simple commands ( get a book , get a diaper , where 's the dog , feed mommy , give that to me , or to daddy ) . He can say dog " da " , cat " ta " , " mama " , " dada " , bottle " ba " ( although he did say " bottle " very clearly ONCE ) . He said " abby " once . He calls Grandpa Paul " pa " and Grammy Lin " na " and everything else " bird " . He can feed himself and eats everything we offer him . He 's eaten everything except honey , shellfish , nuts and eggs . He 's smiling all the time and just loves to see people , places , animals , new things , etc . Right now he wants us to carry him a lot - mainly so he can get up higher and see what 's up there . It 's like he decided he has explored the ground level , and now he wants to know what 's up higher . He points to whatever he wants , and takes you to it if you let him . He smiles and laughs all the time . He 's a charmer , everyone loves him , he 's a big flirt . He 's really a pleasure as a son . We 're definitely lucky . We love you , Chrisaroo ! What a great birthday party for Chris ! He couldn 't have enjoyed it more . The kid was on cloud 9 all afternoon . He was surrounded by people who love him and paid attention to him . He got balloons , cake , and toys . He crashed and was asleep by 6 : 30 , but man , he had a great time . I was all stressed out about the people flaking out and how they weren 't coming . But it didn 't matter at all . We are lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful people . I 'm definitely happy to be back here . Now we have to go clean up the mess . . . Chris has been whiny all day , and I think it 's contagious . I hope he 's not getting sick , as we have a Halloween party tonight at John 's lab , and his birthday party tomorrow . Last thing we need is a sick birthday boy . I thought everyone we invited to Chris 's party was coming ( except John 's parents ) . But then Marie and Gary forgot they had plans , so they can 't go . Next Roger , Kristen and Oliver called today to say they can 't come . Now it sounds like Gabi and Sandip may not make it either because they don 't have a car , and without the others from the city they can 't get here . Now I 'm depressed about it . Chris won 't know the difference , but someday he will . I think maybe next year we 'll do something small , just with the people who we know will come . I don 't really want him to have to deal with people 's plans changing at the last minute . I don 't even want to deal with it myself . I know it 's a fact of being stuck between two worlds . My friends who don 't have kids don 't think it 's that big of a deal , so they don 't think much of changing their plans . And that 's the way I used to be too . But somehow it feels different with a kid . And now I want people to commit yes or no and stick to it . But it 's not reasonable to ask my friends to do that . So maybe it 's time to stop straddling both and pick one . Well , I guess I already picked one . But I 'm starting to wonder if I 'm working to hard to hang onto the other . Meanwhile , if Chris doesn 't give up soon and take a nap I 'm going to lose my mind ! I was trying to do dishes this morning , and Chris was in the living room complaining . Eventually he stopped , and then he started laughing , so I looked up . There he was , at the baby gate , looking so proud , holding my lily by the plant , hanging it over the gate into the kitchen . I ran over and started whining " no , no , no , no " and he just looked confused . The pot was on the floor , with all the dirt , and he was giving me the plant . How sweet : ( Chris has started dancing , and he loves it . I don 't know where he got it , certainly not from me , but he loves it . The other day at the Y he climbed the slide , stood on top , and started dancing to the music . We entertained him ( and vice versa ) for almost an hour after he was exhausted at Gabi and Sandip 's house while he danced to Salsa music . Now he 's dancing to the Beatles . Very cute . We were walking out of a restaurant yesterday , and he stopped walking and started dancing . His other new trick is kissing . He 's been air kissing for a few weeks , but in the last couple days he started leaning in and kissing . Today he kissed my face . Very sweet . Now we 're off to the second children 's museum in 2 days . Lucky baby . They 're all free until he turns 1 , so we figure now 's a good time to go . He 's old enough to have fun , but young enough to be free ! Mimi and Grandaddy visited this weekend and we searched for the best table and chairs for Chris , who is a bit too small for them . He made his vote known early and often , and we finally broke down and bought him the bear rocker instead . I 'm back to the same old - Do I want to take this job - dilemma . This one is perfect for me . Of course I 've said that before . But this time , it really is . It 's for an educational planner , which I didn 't know existed , but is really my ideal future job . Future is the key word here . I 'm just not sure if I want to work now or not . The indecision is driving me crazy . I have no idea . I have an interview for it on Wednesday , though , so we 'll see how that goes . I 'm not sure why these posts are growing fewer and further between . It 's not like I 'm busy or anything . I mean , Chris is non - stop , but we 're home a lot . I just started my first " job " this week . I 'm writing a column for education . com about ways that parents can connect with teachers . So far so good . Dad and Lin came up and visited Tuesday . We went apple picking , and pie baking . It was really fun to spend the day with them . Christopher totally adores them , and vice versa , so that 's always fun . Now the Eppleys are coming tomorrow for the weekend . We haven 't seen them in ages , so we 're all looking forward to that too . Christopher is trying to talk , and it 's becoming clear that he understands a lot of what we say . Today I asked him to go get me a diaper , and he did . He will follow simple commands like - " Go get the ball / book / Brown Bear / birdhouse / dog / Daddy , etc " And he tries to say words , although he has not yet managed to string together more than one sound for a word . So when he started rubbing his eyes at 11 : 30 today for his " afternoon " nap , and said " ba " it took me until he ran toward the kitchen to know that he wanted a bottle , and not a bear or bird or book . Actually , bird is more " br " so that 's different . But book and bottle are indistiguishable . Sometimes he choses the last syllable instead . Cat is " ta " and Grammy Lin became " na na . " Yesterday he chased Marie and Gary 's cat all over the house saying " ta ta ta ta ta ta . " I can 't imagine the cat found it as funny as we did . He 's getting really steady on his feet , and even managed the ramp at the playground today . He can walk with shoes or without , and on uneven surfaces ( like grass , wood chips , sand , etc ) . All a big improvement from last month . And now that he 's understanding us more , at least we can start to communicate . He can tell us when he 's done eating or if he wants more ( with both sound " da " vs . " ma " and hand signs ) . So much changes so quickly around here . Chris is walking well now . Yesterday he was running in circles around the house holding a piece of cheese . Joey was chasing him . I was getting tired just watching them . He 's definitely starting to get more fun . He spent some time with his Grampa and Grammy Lin this weekend and they taught him all sorts of new tricks . Now he sticks his arms straight out in front of him ( as he was taught to do toward the Yankees and say " Evil Empire " - no words yet , though ) . Every time you say " no " to him , he shakes his head . Of course he doesn 't stop doing it or anything . But then I crack up laughing , which isn 't so helpful . It 's really adorable . He 's also starting to follow simple commands . You can tell him to " Get Brown Bear " and he 'll get the book and throw it at you . Of course there 's not really any need to give that instruction as he wants you to read it all day long anyway . I spent 15 minutes straight this morning reading the Dr . Seuss Foot Book ( it can 't have more than 30 words total in the whole book ) . But how can we say no to reading ? I finally hid the book I hate the most - it 's a dog counting book . It drives me and Joey crazy . It 's definitely a lot more fun to spend time with Chris now that he interacts some . He 's trying to say words - " brr " means anything that fits in his toy birdhouse , " ba " is bear ( like Brown bear ) , " da " is dog . . . or anything else . This morning we 're working on " pa " to mean " please " - we 'll see how that works out . He also has the " more " sign down . . . sort of . He definitely know it means " more " - but I 'm not sure he knows what " more " means . I guess we still have some work to do . Chris had his first swimming lesson today . He loved it . He was laughing out loud at least half the time . At one point he arched his back and threw himself underwater , and he still didn 't get upset . He wasn 't a big fan of the pull yourself out of the pool game because he wanted to stay in the water . He certainly couldn 't keep up with the big kids in terms of following directions , but he really enjoyed himself . We took Chris to Edaville Railroad today . We all had a great time . lots of kiddie rides that he could ride on - one you had to be under 36 " tall . He had a lot of fun . By the end of the day he was smiling so much I didn 't even think it was possible . I 'm starting to write about teaching . Felicia keeps telling me I should write a book about my experiences teaching in Oakland . I don 't know what I 'll do with what I write , but it gives me something to do with my free time that feels more productive than searching the internet for jobs that are perfect for me and I won 't apply for . I want to be with Chris all the time , and I want to be away from him and work too . How can that work ? I went into a fabric store and found cute stuff and now I want to make things for him . But I don 't know how . I don 't even want to clean up the house , so would I really make clothes ? I signed up to substitute teach , and the year is starting soon . Soccer should start in a week or 2 as well . I 'm trying to get Chris away from a morning nap , but today he 's got a little cold , so I put him down around 8 : 45 and he 's still asleep ( 10 : 20 ) . Now I 'm bored . And the messy house in front of me is not appealing . I didn 't take the job . It would 've meant 10 hrs of driving for 10 hrs of teaching . It didn 't seem like a good balance . But now I 'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do . I really want to do something ! I signed up to sub in Hopedale , but the year hasn 't started yet and I 'm getting anxious . I went in today to see if there was anything I could do part time ( job or volunteer ) . There are no jobs , and the principal wrote down my name to volunteer . He wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it to the side , which means I 'm doubtful anything will come of it . So I emailed the teacher I still know there to see if she hears of anything for me . Subbing will be all well and good , but it 's not my favorite . Maybe if I sub regularly I 'll get to know the students and it 'll be different than it would 've been in Oakland . Maybe I should transfer my credential over now , just in case . I think I just have to take a test . The eternal question seems to be if I should work and what to do . So now I 'm presented with the perfect job for me , but it 's an hour + commute . I 'd teach 1 2 - hr block of history / English to 18 students , and get paid fairly well for it . I was so excited about it until the reality of 10 hrs commuting every week started to sink in . I don 't want to be away from Chris so long , and I 'd be committing through June . Now I 'm starting to have second thoughts . I really want to do it , but I also want to be here . It 's a lot of time away from Chris for 2 hrs of work . I could work full time in Hopedale in a similar amount of time . Of course this school is a similar population to Frick , and I know I 'd love it there . I just don 't think I can handle committing to being away that much and driving hrs each day to get there . I have a meeting with them this afternoon , so I 'm going to have to figure things out in the next few hours . If I 'm not going to take it , I want to tell them ASAP since school starts next week . Chris took his first steps Friday night right before bed . We had a busy day Thursday with Erin and Nathan ( her nephew ) visiting . Went to the Museum of Science and then to the North End for dinner . Chris didn 't sleep all night . We attributed it to being overwhelmed by the day . Friday we went to the Basketball Hall of Fame ( more dragging the baby around to fit the guests schedule ) . He held out better than I did with the lack of sleep . By evening he had gotten pretty cranky . Right around 7 John put him down , standing up , and he just started walking . He took as many as 8 or 10 steps across the living room floor . Then he went to sleep and slept beautifully . Saturday we got up and went into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail , then home to go canoeing ( John got his official welcome to Small Town America with his picture in the Sunday Milford Daily News in the canoe ! ) . Yesterday we tried to relax , but I was still exhausted from all the tourist stuff . I brought them to the airport at 5 : 00 this morning , and then came home and took a 3 hr nap . Hopefully that 'll help . . So I 've decided I need to practice making an egg - free birthday cake for Chris . I started today . I made carrot cake muffins , with applesauce instead of eggs . We 'll see how it turns out . . . The batter tasted good , and without eggs , there 's no reason not to eat it raw ! I 'm going to make a pledge to buy less stuff . There 's no good reason for me to buy so much stuff , except that I like to . We need to pay more attention money , it 's bad for the environment to produce more stuff , and Chris has plenty already - if I buy more I 'm just spoiling him . Besides , his birthday is only a few months away and he 'll get stuff then . I mainly buy too much for Chris . Partly because if he 's entertained then my life is easier . Partly because I want him to play with the stuff . Doesn 't seem like a good plan . So less stuff it is ! Of course one thing I need to do today is exchange stuff at Kohl 's , and I have to go grocery shopping , but food hardly counts . I think staying home with Chris is getting easier . I still am hoping to start enjoying myself . I spent the morning at the zoo with Jenny , Abby and the babies . How much more could I want ? It was definitely fun , but then I dread how long the rest of the day will be when I get home . Chris seems to have functioned ( so far ) today on one long nap . That would definitely make things easier . He napped for 30 mins in the car this morning , and has now been asleep for 2 hrs for his afternoon nap . It 'd be great if I didn 't have to plan around 2 naps every day to avoid cranky baby . I 'm trying to plan a housewarming party , but I don 't want it to get too close to Chris 's first b - day party , so it 'll have to be soon . Maybe Labor Day BBQ ? I have to admit it occurred to me today to start practicing making cakes without eggs so whatever I make for Chris 's birthday will be good . You never know what to expect with all the substitutions . Speaking of substitutes , I spoke with HHS about subbing last week . I think it 'd be nice to sub a couple times a week . Right now I don 't think being solely responsible for baby and house during the day is what is getting to me . I think it 's the idea of no larger goal or job that I 'm working on . I 'm certainly not bored , but I really liked my job , so it 's difficult to give it up . We 're meeting my mom at the Y at 4 , so hopefully Chris will wake up in time for that ! I feel like all day I go back and forth between rushing and waiting . I 've been running around for the last hour while Chris napped to clean up the house and get everything together to go to the pool when he wakes up . Now I 'm ready , and he 's asleep . My whole day is like that . Maybe eventually I 'll figure out how much time I have and be able to fill it better . Got a call from Hopedale High today about subbing . Maybe after all my circles about jobs , the best option right now is subbing . It 's completely flexible , and I should enjoy it . My mom wants me to get a real estate license and work with her . I could do that to help her out . It 's certainly not what I enjoy , but it can 't be too bad either , and it would be very flexible . Maybe I 'll talk with her about it at the pool today . So Superbaby found his cryptonite this weekend . Chris has been big and strong and healthy since day 1 , and we had carefully gone through almost every food out there by 9 months ( which he turned yesterday ) . So Saturday morning we gave him scrambled eggs , and 5 minutes after smearing them all over his face he was covered with hives . I honestly don 't think eating them was the problem , I think it was the skin contact . He ate hard boiled egg last week and had no problem . So a call to 911 and ambulance ride to Milford Hospital later , he came home with a dose of benedryl and advice to not eat eggs again . My brother has a pretty bad egg allergy , but I 'm hopeful that if he doesn 't eat them again , coupled with his size and strength , maybe he 'll grow out of it . I read that somewhere between 2 / 3 and 80 % of babies with egg allergies do grow out of them by age 5 , especially those with minor reactions . And despite the hospital trip , in the end it was a pretty minor reaction - it was hives on his face , lasting for about 15 mins . , and nothing else . We 'll see . I also played soccer Saturday for the first time in months . I picked up with a random team of pick - ups for what turned out to be a very real tournament . We played 4 games with no subs and lost the championship in overtime . Not too shabby ! I scored our only goal , of course it was on what was supposed to be a cross that got botched by the keeper in the pouring rain , but I was happy nonetheless . We had 2 0 - 0 ties , a 1 - 0 win , and lost 0 - 1 in OT of the championship . I 'm still sore , but I may go to the gym this afternoon . Chris just fell asleep for a nap . I 'm planning to go to Toys R Us when he wakes up , eat lunch , go to the gym ( while my mom babysits here ) , and then drive into Cambridge in the afternoon to see KP , Roger and Oliver for dinner . A bit of a hectic day . I have nothing scheduled tomorrow , so it should be okay . I can 't figure out what would make me happiest , but I do know that if I 'm going to be home with Chris , I need to find a way to enjoy the time I spend with him . For months I 've been waiting for him to be more interactive . Maybe that 's unreasonable for a baby . If I keep waiting for him to get older , I 'm just going to miss the time I have with him now and I might as well not be staying home with him . Do I want another ? I think so , but is that just because I 'm supposed to want another ? Or because it 's what I 'm used to ? Part of me wants another so taht I get too spend the time with him or her that I missed with Chris while I was working . I feel like I 'm just jumping in the middle here and I 'm unprepared . I guess that 's how you 're supposed to feel with a newborn , but I didn 't really feel like that with a newborn . John and I were both around for 3 monhts and I felt like we were competent people and could figure it out and do fine . Then I went to work and lost touch , and John cotinued . Now I feel like I 'm jumping in the deep end and I know how to tread water , but not swim . If I can 't swim , then I won 't enjoy anything . I don 't want to stay at home if I 'm just trying to pass the time until John gets back . I should be enjoying my wonderful son and my time off and time to go to museums , zoos , shopping , hang out with friends , etc . On paper , this is the best life ever . I stay home with my beautiful ( and realtively easy ) son , and live two blocks from my best friend who is also staying home . How much better could it get ? I spent Tuesday with friends , Wednesday with a friend I haven 't seen in ages . What could I possibly have to be stressed or unhappy about ? Why am I so tired ? I didn 't even leave the house yesterday because of Christopher 's cough . I 'm really hoping we can leave today . Why am I looking for a job ? I 'm not sure . I just decided not to follow through with the job that would pay me a lot to teach 3 hrs / week to SAT prep kids . So I 'm guessing I don 't want a job for the money . I miss Frick , and the idea of not going back there bothers me . It really felt more like home to me than Berkeley did . And it 's the only job I 've ever had that felt like it mattered . Maybe I could help Courtney with her school planning stuff . Of course maybe she 'd want me to create a website . At least that would look good on a resume . But it 's still not why I 'm looking for a job . I want to do something that matters . Something that might make the world better someday , or at least some people 's lives better , or at least that I can convince myself will . My job at Frick was real . I want to do something real . Maybe teaching is my calling and I 'm desperately seeking something else for no good reason . Maybe it 's because I paid too much for my education if I 'm going to be a teacher . Of course all of that makes me a better teacher , so it 's worth the money . Or it 's worth the money because college was amazing and I can 't imagine a better foundation for my future . Now I 'm trying to decide if I should contact the School & Main Institute . I worked there right after college . I have a lot of respect for the people there , and for their work . When I was there I didn 't have enough education or experience to do anything useful . Now I do . But do I really want to work now ? Or do I want to stay with Chris ? That is the question . Under dr 's orders , Chris isn 't supposed to cry . When he cries he gets the bad croupy noises , so they said just to let him do whatever he wants and not cry . Simple , right ? It 's been quite a day catering to my little half pint . He wants to walk , we walk . He wants to climb the stairs , we climb the stairs ( he made it to the top by the way ) . Can you spoil a baby in 1 day ? Meanwhile , he isn 't acting sick at all ? Isn 't that something Ben Franklin had ? Croup sounds so old , yet Chris has it . He played all day at the beach with me and Courtney . I put him down for his afternoon nap , and when he woke up it sounded like he had swallowed a duck ( " no , a seal " according to the dr ) . So now my oversized child is on steroids , so I 'm expecting the Jolly Green Giant any day now . I 'm trying to figure out what to do work - wise . I have an " audition " for a teaching position at an SAT prep place next week . I 'd teach 1 class , for 3 hrs / week , a mile away , and make $ 25 / hr . But I 'm having second thoughts . I really want a job more for the job than for the money , and while that 's good money , it 's not such an interesting jjob . Courtney is working on planning a new school , maybe I can help with that . It sounds more interesting ( although less money if any ) . We 'll see . I dragged Chris shopping all day with my mother . We got dresses for Jenna 's wedding in September , then went out to lunch . Found that Olive Garden had some good kids ' options . We ordered Chris the Chicken , broccoli and pasta . He loved it . Then we went to Toys ' R Us to find some sort of walker thing so I don 't have to walk with him ALL DAY LONG EVERY DAY . We found another baby , 2 weeks younger than he . They are the same size and doing all the same things . Turns out that although they live in Natck , they visit a relative in Hopedale and play at the park across the street from our house . Hopefully they 'll call next time they 're in town . In 8 . 5 months I have yet to find a baby that Chris can play evenly with . He 's either bigger or smaller , and at a different developmental point . I know that soon enough that will all even out , but right now just a couple months makes all the difference in the world . John took Joey and Chris out for a run . I 'm sore from 2 days of exercise . Pilates Monday night , elliptical machine yesterday morning , then the nautilus circuit , a 2 mile walk on the trail and then 3 miles with KP and Oliver to Harvard Square and back to her house . So now they 're running and I 'm alone in the house with Roomba , drinking my coffee . Nice break . What was that , the 15th / 16th century ? Chris seems to be redefining it ( for me at least ) . He 's so much more interesting and fun than 2 weeks ago . We 've moved on from pulling up and falling over non - stop to crawling all over the house and looking at new things . He 's curious about everything , and now that we 've basically babyb - proofed ( except the dog ) , we can let him look around , supervised at least . He 's having fun , and I don 't have to follow him to catch him . Plus , it 's pretty interesting to watch him try to figure things out and be interested in every thing , no matter how small or simple . I went to the Y for the first time yesterday - to Pilates class . It confirmed what I already knew , that my core muscles are gone . Went back this morning for the cardio and nautilus machines . It felt great to go to the gym . I haven 't been in a year and a half . Left Chris in the day care at the Y both times . Last night when I picked him up they said there had been an accident . Some boy grabbed his arm . He didn 't cry until they put a wet papertowel on it to cool it down . He cries anytime you put a wet wipe near him , so I assume it was no big deal . It did make me wonder if we should leave him there , but I decided to try again this monring . Today was great . The woman in charge was wonderful , and completely in control . She 's there every morning , so I think I may try to go earlier in the day and see how that works . There 's a Wednesday Pilates class in the morning , so I guess I ' l try that out . We also went for a nice walk on the bike trail with Jenny , Abby , Matt and baby . It 's certainly nice to spend my days at the gym and bike trails . Maybe this no job thing will work out after all . Now Chris is trying to climb over the activity table . . . maybe I should go . I just signed up for milk delivery . In Berkeley we could pick up an organic vegetable box each week down the street from our house . In Hopedale we can get milk from a local farm delivered weekly to our door . I 'm pretty excited about it . It 's not much more expensive than buying it at the store , and it 's from a local farm . They deliver lots of other stuff - all the dairy products , and other food too . I get the list Friday , when my first half gallon of milk arrives . When Chris gets a little older we can even take him to the farm and show him the cow that makes our milk . Pretty cool , if you ask me ! The baby likes the dog . And he likes pulling up and climbing and crawling - on the dog , over the dog and through the dog . The dog no longer likes the baby . Joey is the world 's most friendly dog , but she doesn 't like being climbed on . So now she 's growling when the baby climbs on her . Our solution is to put Joey 's bed in a pretty enclosed part of the living room so the baby can 't get there . Now we just have to teach Joey to go there to excape Chris . Can you teach an old dog new tricks ? Especially one who was demoted to dog status with the birth of the baby . We 'll soon find out . I wrote my college thesis about Hopedale . It was founded in 1842 as a utopian community , and then was bought out in the 1850s by George and Ebenezer Draper so they could start to expand their company . That company , The Draper Corporation , eventually became the 2nd largest textile loom manufacturer in the world . They built the town around the factory , and in many ways became the model company town . They built award winning factory housing - duplexes with 2 stories , 3 bedrooms , full walk up attic and basement , yards , 1200 - 1800 sq feet . That 's what we 're living in now - one of the old Draper duplexes . In the 1970s the company started to struggle and moved south . The huge building in the center of town has been vacant for 30 years now . There 's a committee to figure out what to do with it . My parents graduated from Hopedale High , and so did my grandmother . Like I said , I guess all the signs were there that I 'd move back . Poor John got dragged along . I joined the Y today . I 'm not sure why I 'm so excited about it , but I am . Maybe it 's because I haven 't been to a gym since before I knew I was pregnant with Christopher . There 's 2 hrs of free childcare , and a play gym for the baby . Classes for babies , and classes , weights , a pool and cardio equipment for me . They have dinner nights and birthday parties and free wireless internet . What more could I want ? I think I may move in . Then I won 't have to unpack . We went out to buy an armchair and came home with a second couch . Pretty much par for the course . It actually looks good , though . And now that most of the living room is filled with couches , there 's less to baby - proof . Chris is on the move . He commando - crawls everywhere , pulls up ( and lets go ) . He 's starting to " cruise " now , which is scary . When we left the Cape Thursday he waved goodbye for the first time ( who knows what he was thinking , though ) . Lots of progress in the last few weeks . Now if only we 'd make so much progress unpacking the house . When I used that as the title for a chapter in my college thesis , I didn 't realize it was the title of a book by Edward Bellamy and I needed to cite it . Now I do , so maybe it should be in quotes . When I left town 13 years ago , I never thought I 'd return . Of course all the signs were there . I went to Swarthmore College , and defined success as city life . I thought I 'd have some big important job in a city , work a lot , maybe get married and have kids . I assumed I 'd pay someone to raise them . After Swarthmore was the non - profit job that turned into Fed - Exing and making copies . Then enter software development like everyone else in the late 90s . Next John and I got married and moved out west for grad school at UC Berkeley . Then I found the only job I 've had that mattered , and the only job I 've truly enjoyed . I taught history and English at Frick Middle School in Oakland . I never really thought I 'd leave there , and part of me already wishes I hadn 't left . John and I decided it was time for him to get into the job force , and we chose Massachusetts as a place to settle near family and friends . Baby 's awake from his nap . . . I started this earlier today but had to run . The Basics . . . I 'm trying to stay at home this year with Chris while John works . It 's a big change , and a bit difficult for me , but exactly that I want to do at the same time . I want a record of my thoughts during this time , as well as what Chris is doing during the year . It will probably include random musings about life , Chris , work , not working , and philosophical choices in my life . Hopefully then when I try to decide if this is going to work long term , I can look back at my life this year and see if it 's going to work for us or not . Chris was born 10 / 29 / 06 , which makes him almost 9 months old . He 's the happiest baby I know . He 's trying to learn to walk . If you ask him , he already knows low to walk . He 's quite wobbly , though . He crawls around , pulls up on everything he can find , and lets go . All he really wants to do is walk around ( which requires help now ) . He 's also a big baby and a good eater . Last night 's dinner was salmon , sweet potatoes and regular potatoes . Tonight was miso soup , tofu , veggies and baby cereal , zucchini , and chicken . We got back from vacation today . John started work last week at MIT ( long commute ) , and goes back next week . Now I 'm going to watch the Houston v . Chicago MLS game . |
This short story set in the Savannah Zombie Novel universe takes place at the same time as the first entry , A New Death . It focuses in on thirteen year old CJ and his family , who appear in A New Darkness . This story bridges books 1 and 2 . I remember eating recently . Something tough shifts between my dry gums . I work my jaw in an effort to free whatever is in my mouth . It touches my cracked tongue . I feel every snapping tendon . Every dry grinding joint . For some reason , I think I should be feeling something , but again , I cannot remember . Some kind of bodily warning that I am harming myself , some indicator of distress . The HUNGER does not take long to remind me of the emptiness in my stomach . As if I forgot . I look down and notice a gaping hole in my abdomen . Something long and slippery sways from the opening . It reminds me of I try to get up and leave again , but quickly he is on top of me . His fists begin to pummel my face . I hear the skull fragmenting inside my head . Bone splinters , my already piss - poor vision becoming blurrier . He stops and backs off , clutching at his side . He yells in pain and his muscles begin to bulge through his orange jumpsuit . The fabric begins to tear as his flesh contorts . His eyes blaze red . Haha , jk . It 's weird though , because this is the first time I 've really put my work out there locally . My books have been in several local bookstores , but unless someone just walked in there , they would have no idea my books exist . First , A New Darkness releases on Kindle this Saturday ! You can still pre - order it and save 33 % on this weekend 's price and 66 % on list price . If you haven 't yet , go and get it here . Maybe you 're like , " I still haven 't read A New Death yet . " Well , good for you , A New Death is on sale until Saturday ! Get it for $ 1 . 99 here ! Or maybe you like paper . ( Who doesn 't ? Books smell amazing . ) Well , good news for you , I 've made some updates to the paperback version of A New Death and started work on the A New Darkness paperback this week . So both of those will be live in the next couple of weeks . It 's called Thunderclap . Thunderclap works like this : You go and hook up your social media ( Facebook , Twitter , and Tumblr ) to my Thunderclap promotion . Then on Saturday at noon , Thunderclap will blast out a message featuring my book and link through all of our social media accounts . Pretty cool , right ? The only catch is I have to get full support or else the message won 't go out . As of right now , I 'm at 14 out of 100 supporters . With only 14 people signed on , it already has a reach of 4313 people . Can you imagine if we get all 100 ? I 've done this before and have never received any junk mail from it , or any emails afterwards . It 's an extremely easy way to help support me . All you have to do is give up one tweet or status update on Saturday . Don 't forget to pre - order A New Darkness ! You 'll save 33 % from weekend launch price and a whoppin ' 66 % from regular list price ! Click on the banner below ! The wood crackled and shifted in the brick fireplace . Lexx leaned forward and placed another log into the slowly dying fire . It quickly caught flame and the fire grew . Before reclining back into his spot against the couch , he pulled a small sliver from the fire and held the burning tip to his newly found cigar . He puffed patiently , allowing the tobacco to light . A sweet smelling smoke filled the room , but no one seemed to mind . The man grinned his boyish - grin and sat back into his spot next to Tori on the carpet . Josh lay adjacent to them in the love seat ; his feet pointed towards the warmth of the fireplace . His eyes were shut , most likely resting , not sleeping . Every now and again , his toes would wiggle , almost to acknowledge he was still awake . Everyone was exhausted . It could be seen on each one of their faces . The events of the past few days had been physically wearing , and just as emotionally tiresome . After leaving Savannah and the trials that they faced there , the road to Josh 's family did not seem any easier . Three times already they have had to find an alternate route due to road blocks . Once , they actually found themselves on I - 16 which should have been clogged with fleeing traffic , but due to a massive pile - up , was mostly empty past Effingham County . And then there were the dead . Their numbers weren 't swollen like in the city , but the small groups that banded together out in the country could be just as frustrating . They did seem to group together . Josh was convinced that the undead didn 't " communicate " in a normal sense , but when one moaned , the others heard it and moved in that direction . He was afraid of them grouping in large numbers , like at the grocery store and the day he rescued the others . But despite all this , despite that they were probably still a day 's journey from his family , everyone was in good spirits . The house they were currently in was a God - send . It was tucked out of the way , away from the roads and neighboring homes . And best of all , it was left almost entirely intact . Whoever lived here , left everything and split . There was the possibility that they never came home , but no one ever brought that up . Jeremy tried not to think about Ben , to which he immediately felt somewhat guilty for trying to do . He did want to remember him , but it was still hard . The two men had formed a friendship against the backdrop of the end of the world . Jeremy was just glad that the Lumberjack got what he deserved for killing Ben . " So , Josh , " Lexx started . " I still haven 't heard how you ended up being in the right place at the right time . I didn 't have the pleasure of riding in the cab of the truck . " " Yeah , that 's fine , I guess . Not like we 'll be sleeping much anyway , " he said , playfully elbowing Tori in her ribs . She pushed him away , but couldn 't hide the small smile on her face . Everyone settled down . Tori and Lexx moved from the floor to the couch ; Jeremy brought the seat up , but left the footrest out for optimal foot warming from the fire . Lexx reached over , grabbed the blanket sitting on the arm of the couch and then to proceeded to cover himself and Tori . She snuggled into his side . " Work sent me down to Brunswick late in the afternoon last Thursday . We were finishing a job down there , a high school , and had to get a whole bunch of our ladders and tools out of the building . It was this whole last minute " fiasco " ( he uses " air - quotes " ) , and the stuff had to be out of the school by that night . So , I got the pleasure of driving south and picking everything up . I left our shop - Can I just say something real quick ? I think it 's crazy how the warehouse that y ' all met in and spent your first night together , is the same place I work . I mean , what are those odds ? That you would stay there and then later , when all hope seems lost , who shows up ? Just a guy driving a truck from the same exact place ! Anyways , just thought I 'd say that . So , I left the shop sometime around two , I think ? Yeah , it was around two , because I remember thinking about how Brunswick is an hour away , and that meant two hours of travel time and however long it would take to load everything on the truck . And it was so hot that day . So freaking hot . I get down to the job site around three . Everything was still normal then . A couple of the guys met me outside the school and informed me that they were still hunting down ladders within the building . Tools have a great way of disappearing on construction sites , but I digress . It takes us an hour to track down the last five remaining ladders . The school was massive , this two - story deal , with a huge courtyard in the middle of it . Everything there was state of the art . Real top - notch kind of place . Kids would have been lucky to have gone there if they ever got the chance . But now they won 't . At least for now . I was fixing to crank up the truck and leave , when we heard the first of the screams . They came from the front side of the building . The three of us ran towards the commotion ; I left the keys dangling in the ignition . I quickly passed both of them . Both were chain - smokers and both were having trouble catching their breath . What they were about to see , would not help . I got there first and knew instantly what was going on . When I saw the four bodies hunched over the kicking and screaming man , I knew exactly what I was looking at . There was no question in my mind . But , even though I knew what was happening , my body wouldn 't react . I remember standing there , frozen to the ground ; my brain racing to process this new information . I screamed within my skull , yelling at myself to move , to act somehow . Johnny and Larry finally arrived next to me . Johnny was keeled over , trying to catch his breath . I seemed to snap out of my daze when they showed up . Larry 's jaw hung open . He went to move forward , to try and help the attacked man , but I held him back . There was nothing we could do for him now . I 'll spare you the details , because I 'm sure you 're aware of the gore these monsters are capable of inflicting . Even if we did get him away from the feeding , there was no way the three of us blue - collar boys would know how to put everything back in him , in the right places . The four zombies were a mixed bag of characters . One construction worker , complete with reflective vest and hardhat . One college kid from the neighboring local university across the street . A guy in business suit and one soccer mom . Of the four , she looked the most fresh , but I would still have classified them as the ' slower ' ones . She noticed us first . Forgetting about the meal in front of her , she slowly stood up , meat hanging from her mouth , and began shambling in our direction . I think my co - workers were still confused at the time as to what was really going on . Larry moved forward again , and for the second time , I held him back . ' There 's nothing we can do for her now , Larry , ' I said . ' We have to go . It 's not safe to stay here . ' He looked at me like I was insane . His shoulder jerked out of my hand as he made his way towards the dead woman . Her arms reached out to him , welcoming his approach . I motioned to Johnny for us to leave . He hesitated a moment , but nodded , and we turned to run . I looked around . More corpses were wandering onto the jobsite . How there were that many , so quick , I don 't understand . It was almost like a switch was flipped and they came off an assembly line . We made the plan to go to his house first . He lived right outside of Brunswick , so it wasn 't far . I knew I had to get to my family back in Savannah , but between my brother - in - law and father - in - law , I knew they would get out of the city safely . My plan was to get Johnny set at his place and then go north from there . At the time , I didn 't know it would take me several days to get back home . I spent that first night at Johnny 's place , helping him set up some defenses . His plan was to hunker down and ride this thing out . And for him that was a great plan . He had mountains of those military meal - ready - to - eat 's , guns galore , and a great location . His home was situated deep within the woods and far enough away from the general population . In the whole time I 've known Johnny , I never would have known he was a doomsday prepper . I left early that next morning . He offered for me to take some MRE 's for the road , so I took several . Those things are definitely designed for essential nutrition , not taste ! ( He chuckles to himself . ) The military 's take on mashed potatoes was indeed questionable . I thanked him and wished him luck before I drove off . Interstate 95 was out of the question . From the exit ramp , I could see it was completely clogged with cars and chaos . I knew I would be taking back roads , but which ones I was unsure . Normally , I would carry a map of Georgia with me . Despite my driving all over the state for my company , they seemed to think that directions scribbled down on a yellow piece of paper were far more superior to a GPS system . I got lost one time too many , so I finally broke down and bought a good old - fashioned folding map . Never got lost again . Highway 17 would have been my next best choice of getting home as quickly as possible . And it would have been , if I didn 't keep running into roadblocks of all freaking kinds . Car wrecks were the worst . Some I was able to get by , thanks to the new brush - guard my company bought for the truck . Others on the other hand required some extensive backtracking and huge losses of time . I eventually had to stop for the night . I didn 't want to risk anything in the dark . Being out in the country , the only light I had was the moon , the stars , and the headlights of the truck . Long story short , I found an old , abandoned barn to sleep in . I didn 't want to sleep in the truck , running the chance of getting surrounded and trapped . My cell phone didn 't have any reception , and I don 't think it was because I was in the middle of nowhere . I had the sneaky suspicion that no cell phones had reception . Anywhere . The next morning , I woke up and made my way down to the truck . I was stopped when I saw one lone zombie wandering between the truck and myself . It was a little boy , maybe ten years old . He wore a Buzz Lightyear t - shirt and stained matching pajama pants . His skin was their trademark pale , his eyes sunken and dark . Small bits of blood gathered around his lips . I wished Johnny would have offered me one of his guns , a pistol at least , but the only thing I had for a weapon was the steel pipe I kept on the truck . It was about a foot and a half long , with a ninety - degree elbow on the end . I kept it on the truck , just in case I ever got into any trouble and needed some physical reinforcement . The boy saw me and began to shamble in my direction . Zombie children are not really something you see a lot of in zombie video games or movies . And I understand why now . His gait was uneven as he hobbled over to me , his little jaw clamping open and shut . He held up his arms , fingers curled , reaching for me . I knew what I had to do ; I just didn 't want to . I swung the pipe , the steel elbow connecting with the boy 's temple . His skull quickly shattered and his body fell limp onto the ground in front of me , thick , red blood oozing from the gaping wound in his head . I stood there in silence for a moment , not sure what to do with myself . The boy was in between the ages of my niece and nephew . My desire to get home grew exponentially . I would pull into the Savannah area later that night . My wife 's sister and her family lived outside of Savannah in Port Wentworth . It took some time avoiding the city , but I finally made it to their house around ten . The place was a mess when I got there . A pile of bodies in the living room , the front door broken in , everything missing from the cabinets , and a trail of blood leading away from the pantry to outside . At first , I was really worried , but quickly relaxed a little . All the food was missing . It took me a minute to realize that meant they were alive . Scavengers wouldn 't have taken everything . Pots , pans , and all the other cooking utensils were gone too . No , my family made it out alive . I was still concerned with all the blood though . Obviously , the bodies in the living room were zombies who had broken in the front door . As I pulled them back outside , I took note of the bullet holes in each one 's forehead . No doubt , my brother - in - law 's doing . The last one I went to pull out didn 't have a bullet wound in the head , no , its face was smashed in completely . I spent some time securing the front and back doors as best as I could , before I walked around and inspected the house . Like I said , the kitchen was empty . I guess they didn 't think I 'd want a snack . Luckily , I still had one MRE left . After finishing that off , I went to check the rest of the house . The master bedroom was a mess , but to be honest , that was somewhat normal . I walked into the adjoining bathroom . " " There was a note written to me on the mirror . It was written by my wife informing me that they were gone to the cabin . The cabin is an old farmhouse that we restored out past Statesboro . It 's our little vacation spot . I had feeling they would be there , but knew I should check Savannah first before heading out west , just in case they didn 't make it out . But seeing her handwriting on the mirror was just further evidence that they had escaped . She also left me the combination to the gun safe as well . I was relieved that although they didn 't leave me anything to eat , they had at least thought to leave me a weapon . Upon opening the safe , I found out that wasn 't entirely the case . Sitting inside the safe was a single six - shot , snub - nosed revolver . And one bullet . One . A note written on a post - it , in my brother - in - law 's handwriting , read , ' just in case . ' Just in case ? It took me a second to understand what it meant . It was a way out . Not that I would use it now , but if I ever got trapped and the only way out was to become a walking corpse , this would give me an alternative . It made me smile , because they knew that I would make it to them alive . They knew there was no way I would let it come to that . And they were right . I woke up the next morning ready to get to my family . As I passed my niece and nephew 's bedrooms upstairs , I stopped and remembered the two of them and how much they meant to me and my wife . We loved those kids like our own . CJ was thirteen now and just growing into this awesome guy . He was huge for his age , as tall as me and his father , maybe even taller . The boy was solid too . He had played football since me and his aunt started dating . But the kid had character too . He was light years ahead of his friends in maturity . He was respectful and a hard worker . While most kids his age were playing video games , he was restoring a Chevrolet Chevelle with his father so he would have a car when he was sixteen . Crazy , right ? You know what I was doing at thirteen ? Trying to figure out how to catch all the Pokémon ! " " Hailey , " Josh continued . " Hailey was just as much fun . She was eight going on nine and talked nonstop . She had grown into that age where everything she thought , was also broadcasted to the world . It could grow old real quick , but I would have given anything then to hear her little voice . As I took one final look at her room , before passing on , I noticed that all her stuffed animals were still sitting on her bed . I guess Chris didn 't let her take any , to save room in the vehicles for important things . I walked into her room and grabbed the green frog I had seen her with numerous times . I smiled and went downstairs . After retrieving the revolver from the gun safe , I had left it there the night before ; I made my way to the back door . The blood leading out from the pantry began to worry me . Why would there have been a bloody something in the pantry ? It was empty now , so whatever it was , was long gone . I shook it off and readied myself for what could be waiting for me outside . I opened the back door and there were three zombies in between me and the truck . Two of them I didn 't recognize , but one I did . It was Susan Powers , whom the kids lovingly called , " Ms . P . " She was missing chunks of flesh from her right arm and neck . She was wearing a half - open bathrobe and pink house slippers . Her eyes were the same dead black just like all the others , any trace of who the woman was before long gone . The three of them smelled me and fumbled their way up the steep driveway . I clutched the steel pipe tightly as I ran towards them . I swung the pipe connecting with the first one 's forehead , a mist of red spraying me in the face . I pulled the elbow out of its skull and swung again , bringing the pipe across the second one 's face . It too caved in , leaving me and Ms . P . She wasn 't the least bit concerned with her fallen friends ' demises , but continued her small uncoordinated steps towards me . No remorse , no concern except to feed . I put her down quickly as well . More dead were coming into the neighborhood , so I made haste to get into the truck and leave . I pulled out of there quick , as the mass of undead inhabitants poured in . I wasn 't sure if they smelled my fresh meat , or maybe it was the sound of the truck , but they were coming from all over . " I stopped and … and there she was . She was standing there in the middle of the road , almost as if she was blocking me in . It didn 't take long for me to notice who the short , little , blonde haired , once blue eyed girl was who stood out in front of me . Except her eyes were no longer the vivid blue , but black as starless night . Near her ankle were the remains of dried blood . In the hand of her slack left arm a pink teddy bear was still grasped . I remember getting out of the still running truck and walking up to her . She let out a small moan as I neared ; my hands trembling . I had left the pipe on the seat of the truck . What was I to do ? The fact that she was standing there in front of me , dead , well , all the hope I had of finding my family alive vanished . Her one free arm reached out for her uncle and it took everything in me not to reach out and pull her in and whisper that everything was going to be okay . " I was sitting in the truck after that when your voice came on the radio . You sounded so scared and like you had no way out . I 'm not sure why , but I knew I had to help you . " As Jeremy lay in the bed , staring up in the ceiling , his mind wandered in thought . He felt sorry for Josh and the loss of his niece . He knew what it was like to lose someone close . His mother had at least lived a full life . An eight - year - old girl on the other hand , that was a hard thing to accept . Traffic was at a standstill . It had been thirty minutes since James Brighton and his car had moved forward an inch . In the Georgia heat and humidity , thirty minutes was forever , especially if you do not have air - conditioning . Sitting high above the Savannah River on the Talmadge Bridge , James wiped sweat from his face and fanned himself with an old catalog that never made it inside from the mailbox . His small , four - doored compact was full of his belongings . His trunk was stuffed with suitcases filled with his clothes ; his TV and other electronics filled the backseat along with anything else he grabbed in his rush to leave the house . He should have . His brother called him before everything even happened . Tried to warn him to get the hell out of the city , but just like always , he ignored his older brother 's sound advice . He had laughed it off at the time . The dead walking and eating the flesh of the living ? Strange government orders ? Please , James had said , that was movie stuff . The dead were walking , and they were in fact eating the flesh of the living . James had seen it himself . There was a septuagenarian woman living in the apartment next to him . She could not even hear her own TV and blared the volume throughout the night , but she always complained to the super anytime James had a few friends over . She was the first one that James saw turn . How sad , James had thought at the time . Alzheimer 's must be kicking in . Maybe even Dementia . But it was not Alzheimer 's . Or Dementia . It was something else . Something that made the old woman attack James with an unnatural strength and try to tear the skin from his bones . He grimaced . He could not forget the sickening crack of skull and the slosh of brain matter from when he was forced to bash her head against his doorknob . He closed his eyes and placed his head in his hands , his forehead slick with perspiration . He should have listened to his big brother . Okay , maybe not perfect , but definitely their father 's idea of perfect . John had been the Boy Scout , the war hero , the family man . Basically , everything that James was not . While John was a respectable fighter pilot for the Marines , James worked at Home Depot . Nothing wrong with working at Home Depot , but when stacked against his brother 's list of accomplishments , James always fell short . What made it unbearable was that John never gloated in it . He had been the perfect big brother . John never picked on James growing up , always looked out for his younger brother , and even lent him money when James needed it . James was on the uphill climb of the bridge , and from where he was sitting , he couldn 't see what the holdup was . This particular stretch of road between Georgia and South Carolina was notorious for horrible back - ups . With the sudden exodus from Savannah , it was much worse . Looking out to his right , over the Savannah Riverfront , he saw two small dots appear just above the horizon . They increased in size as they drew closer ; their shapes began to grow more familiar to James . Soon enough , the sound that followed them arrived , a roar of engines and wind . The thought of the military bombing the city was ridiculous . Sure , when he had passed through the city , he saw plenty of the monsters attacking people , but there were still people fighting back and numerous others still alive . The city was not completely overrun yet . It would be complete overkill to level Savannah . The pair of jets flew over the bridge . They were low enough to where you could see the markings on the side . It could have been his imagination , but James swore he saw his brother 's call sign on one of the jets . They passed over and then shot up into the sky . James heard screaming come from the Savannah bound lanes . He looked over to see , about fifty feet away , a monster attacking its family inside a car . It was held back by its seat belt , but was able to grab a hold of the person next to them . Blood pulsed onto the window , covering the carnage behind it . The people in the cars nearby began to panic . Multiple drivers began to try and push themselves away from the blood - soaked vehicle . This only caused the cars to become more gridlocked . Finally , a large black man , the size of a football player , got out of his truck . In his hand was a rather large hammer . He went over to the monster 's vehicle , opened the door , and began swinging the hammer into the creature 's head . After several swings , the thing 's body went still . The man looked at the remaining family , nodded , and then returned to his vehicle . Like James had told his brother over the phone , this was all movie stuff . Fictional . Make - believe . However , reality made a hard argument that the events starting yesterday were very , very real . As if to punctuate his thoughts on reality , he saw movement out of the corner of his eye . In front of him , the bridge erupted into flame and debris . The suspension cables groaned and snapped as the bridge twisted from the explosion . James shielded his eyes from the heat blast . He could barely see through the thick black smoke and fire , but he heard screaming . It took him a moment to realize it was his own . The car in front of him slammed into him in reverse , pushing him back into another car . He tried stomping down on the brakes , but the car kept pushing . When the cars behind them would move no more , the driver got out and began running away from the blast . Others did the same . James got out of his car and ran . Others bumped into him as they all ran for safety . There was a loud crack as one of the suspension cables broke loose and landed on a row of cars , crushing them and their inhabitants . James picked up speed . He ran several feet until a large weight crashed into him . It sent him flying into a minivan , and he hit the ground with a thud . The weight was quickly on top of him . There was a sharp pain in his stomach as he opened his eyes . The weight was humanoid , but it wasn 't human . It couldn 't be . Its eyes were as black as tar , bloodshot . Its open mouth revealed rows of broken , jagged teeth . Rich , red blood hemorrhaged from the cracks of its eyes , nostrils , and the corners of its lips . It wasn 't wearing a shirt , but James could not distinguish its gender . Its chest looked to be torn off ; the beginnings of rib cage poking through . He coughed , blood spurting from his mouth . He felt his body go into shock . He did not feel the pain , only the wiggling of fingers inside him . James watched as the monster pulled out several feet of intestine and shoved them into its mouth . It chewed , bile and fluids dripping down its chin . It could have been his imagination again , or maybe the loss of blood , but James could have sworn it grinned as it ate . Here is Xavier 's take on the chase scene through Savannah 's Forsyth Park . He did a great job of showing the overhanging Oak branches and the beautiful fountain located in the historic park . Anyone who read A New Death will remember this scene and what happened next ! |
First for the Photo . I tell people about how persistent Michael can be , but until you actually see it , it 's hard to understand . This is a perfect example . Michael was playing with his puzzle game when we started the bedtime routine . He continued playing while I got him changed . ( He did hand the game to me for the potty break . ) He carried it upstairs with him . He let Andy brush his teeth . He didn 't put the game down until I was in the middle of our second bedtime story . Last week my mom made an annoying comment while we were talking on the phone . I could hear Michael in the background chattering away . My mom said , " Back when we were having you evaluated when you were having trouble in school one of the psychologists mentioned that excessive talking is often a sign of ADD . " Yes mom , that was around the same time I was inappropriately diagnosed with ADD . Remember , they were wrong . Stop trying to put bad ideas into my head . Don 't worry , ADHD is one thing I 'm not concerned about with Michael . If anything , I wish he was just a tiny bit more distractable . Now onto the Stuff . I want to thank everyone for the kind words and thoughtful ideas you provided yesterday . The advice is very helpful , but so is the knowledge that I 'm not alone . There is comfort in knowing that other people go through the same battles with their children . I also have to say that " Myworld " left one of the best comments ever . She said : The way my daughter and I hit each other 's buttons , you 'd think we were in a whack - a - mole game some days . It 's both funny and true , which in my book is perfection . And finally , I need to do a little site maintenance . I 've been using the blog rolls from other blogs for way too long now and I 'd like to update my own . So please , if you read my blog , but you aren 't on my list , please leave a link to your blog in the comments . I know I 'm missing out on some good stuff , and I don 't want to . I 've opened up the new post screen several times since my post on Monday , but I haven 't been able to bring myself to start typing . I don 't have any bad news to share . It 's not that I 've been too busy . I just didn 't have words to describe how I was feeling . Last week I posted about the epic battle Michael and I had over putting a pair of pants on before daycare . It really shook me up . I was upset over the fight . I was concerned about why Michael didn 't want to go to school . I was frustrated because I felt that I was failing at something , but I didn 't even know what it was . This past weekend was nice , and it let me trick myself into thinking that Tuesday was just a fluke . Maybe it really was all about a pair of pants . Maybe this Tuesday morning would be fine . Nothing to worry about . Of course , it wasn 't fine . It was bad . Horrible . Out of control . Nothing I said or did could get Michael to uncurl himself from a ball on the sofa and get him moving towards the door . Nothing . So , after 15 minutes of Michael resisting I finally gave him a choice . Either you walk out to the car , or I carry you . I ended up carrying him , although , it was more like wrestling him . I swear , he grew extra arms and legs for that battle . He managed to kick me in the face at one point and at another he managed to get his foot and leg all the way down the front of my shirt . I 'm going to be honest here folks , and it 's not going to be pretty . I cringe just thinking about it , but I 've since learned I 'm not alone , and that knowledge really helped . So , here goes . Once I got him strapped into his seat he screamed , " I 'm going to kill you ! " at me . ( I 'm really unresisting the urge to delete this post right now . ) I just sat down and cried . I drove to daycare crying . I did my best to pull myself together for drop off , but I 'm pretty sure my bright , red nose was a dead give away that Michael wasn 't the only one crying . I got Michael settled and tried to leave . He clung to me with such desperation that it broke my heart . " Mommy , don 't leave me ! " After 15 minutes of thPosted by I love to eat out . I mean , I really love to eat out . It 's not that I don 't like cooking , it 's just that there are some things that I can 't make as well as a restaurant . I also like having endless Diet Cokes delivered to the table as well . That said , we don 't eat out very often . Most restaurants are so busy around here that Michael cannot survive the 45 minute wait for a table , let alone sitting through a meal that he won 't touch . Plus , after the major meltdown Michael had in a restaurant this past fall , we haven 't even tried for months . On Friday , I really wanted a cheeseburger . Specifically , a mushroom swiss burger from PJ Whelihans . I mentioned it to Andy and he wasn 't thrilled about the idea . He wasn 't in the mood to haul a screaming child from a restaurant . But , my desire for a burger won out and we headed out to the restaurant . PJ 's is an interesting place . It 's a pub / sports bar . They do a brisk happy hour business on Friday evenings . However , somehow they are also a family restaurant . It seems like an odd mix , but the place has one thing going for it as a kid 's place . It 's loud ! Really loud . They often have live music that drowns out even the most obnoxious tantrum a kid can throw . So , good food , beer , and a noise level that covers up the less desirable sounds of children with live music . Score ! I 'll be honest . When we do something like this I try very hard to keep my expectations realistic . Expecting Michael to sit quietly and color while we wait and then to eat his meal enthusiastically is just setting things up for failure . I decided that a " good " experience would be Andy and I being able to finish our food before being forced to leave by a crazy child . Oh yeah , and nothing major spilled . What did I get ? Michael was great . He sat and colored his entire menu . When he was done , I flipped it over and wrote simple words in bubble letters for him to color in . He was perfectly happy to color while Andy and I downed a plate of wings . ( Wing Bowl Wings ! Not that anyone outside of Philly will get that . ) When dinner wasPosted by I 've been plodding through some of my annual , required , online training at work today . It 's mind numbingly dull . Some of these courses I 've taken ten times , and you know how I feel about repetition . I 've decided to take a short break before my eyes start to bleed and my brain turns to jelly . In honor of all of the quizzes I 've been taking , here is a multiple choice question for you . What is going on in this picture ? a ) Andy let Michael watch Conan the Barbarian . b ) My house was taken over by very short vikings . c ) The child , who won 't focus on hitting a baseball , spent half an hour batting down foam golf balls with Nerf swords . I 'll give you a hint . It 's not answers a or b . We also have a guest phone photo today . While I was working on my post , I received an email from my sister . My mom and Michael took a trip down to visit my sister today . The heading to the email read : Michael found the mud puddle . My response ? I 'm not at all surprised . So , I made a predication in Tuesday 's post . You do know what this means , don 't you ? It means that on Thursday morning when I DON ' T change him out of him PJ pants he 's going to throw a fit and insist that he MUST wear pants that day . If you don 't think that will happen , you haven 't been reading this blog for very long . I felt it only fair to fill you in on what actually happened . I made a mistake . I mentioned to Michael that Thursday was the PJ Pizza party at school and then I asked him which PJ pants he wanted to wear . We quickly decided that he would wear his rocket ship pants . No problem . I planned on putting the rocket ship pants on him when I got him ready for bed last night . That would eliminate any pants battle this morning . So , I got the rocket ship pants and tried to put them on Michael . Nope . He acted like I was insane . How could I possibly expect him to wear the same pants to bed and then to school the next day ? I could hear the disdain and disgust in his voice as he refused to put the pants on . I was tempted to point out that he wore the same " day " shirt to both bed and school , but I didn 't want to mess that up too . So , I conceded and got out a different pair of pants for him to wear to bed and we agreed he would put them on in the morning . I knew this was win / win for me . If he wanted to change , great ! If not , he was still wearing PJs and I could send him in what he slept in . Works for me . Don 't worry , he realized he had foiled his stalling tactic first thing this morning and opted for the time honored , " my tummy hurts " approach . Ha ! Not the best tactic to use with old " Sick - O - Fake - O " as my family liked to call me . I forced him to dig deeper into the stalling bag of tricks and finally won out after countering " my legs are too tired " with a hug that turned into mommy carrying him to the car . So , in summary . Yes , we had the predicted pants battle , but it happened last night instead of this morning . We also had additional battles this morning , just to keep things fun . Or , more simply put ; same old same old . Yes , it 's Wednesday and since London is working hard on the last month of growing a person , I 'm just going to flat out steal the Wednesday Randomness for now . I 'm sure she would do something about that , but I think for a few more weeks I might be able to out run her , so I 'm safe for now . Michael is entering the superhero phase of little boyhood . It 's nice to have a change in obsessions every now and again . However , he sings the theme song over and over again . The problem is that he doesn 't know the words and therefore sings weird things at times . My mind has picked up on this and I know find myself singing odd lyrics in my head at random times . Like : Spider - man , Spider - man does whatever a spider can . Over there , in the air , he has radio active hair . Look out ! Here comes the Spider - man . After World War III broke out over changing his pants yesterday morning I didn 't have much hope for getting Michael a haircut yesterday . I decided to give it a try anyway . I casually asked Michael if he wanted a haircut . He said yes and ran to the door . I went with the momentum ; and we ended up having the easiest , most pleasant haircut experience ever . After the haircut we went to McDonald 's for a Happy Meal Toy . I mean Happy Meal . Michael ate four fries , two McNuggets and played with the toy for 30 seconds . I 'm not sure I understand why he wants to go at all . I know why I don 't want to go . I ended up eating half the fries , drinking a quarter of his shake , and the stupid toy is still in my purse . After a wonderful evening out , it was easy to get Michael up to bed . Once there , he insisted he didn 't need to sleep . He wanted us to read him books endlessly . It took 2 . 5 hours to get him to bed , which took us well beyond MY bedtime . Where does he get the energy from . Just to add insult to injury , he was bright eyes and bushy tailed when I stumbled in to get him up this morning . Fine , so you don 't need 8 hours of sleep . Whatever . Just don 't expect me to be chipper on 6 . 5 hours of sleep . And finally , remember how I complained about my coworker Posted by I 'm just going to come out and say it today . I 'm not in a good mood . Michael and I got into World War III this morning over the fact that I wanted to change him into jeans instead of PJs before leaving the house this morning . If I wasn 't already stressed out from the endless battles I seem to be having with him lately , I probably would have gone with the distract with humor approach or the let him wear them to school and deal with the consequences approach . But I am just sick and tired of the battles and I just wanted him to PUT THE PANTS ON NOW SO I ' M NOT LATE FOR WORK ! Big mistake on my part . That just escalated everything to super freak out level . We ended up yelling at each other while I tried to pull his pants off and he kept pulling them up . When we reached shrieking range , I stop and told Michael that I was behaving poorly and put myself into time out . I totally deserved to be there too . So did Michael , but getting him into time out at that point would have been counterproductive to me calming down . So , I plopped my butt down on the stair and sulked for a few minutes . Michael gave me a funny look and sulked on the sofa . That seemed to do the trick , and I was able to get Michael dressed and out the door without too much more effort . When I got Michael to school , I realized that I had forgotten Michael 's breakfast , and I had to beg the early teacher for some food . I already felt like a crappy mom by that point , so admitting that I can 't even remember to feed my child didn 't do much to make me feel better . Clearly not a morning to include on my Mommy of the Year award form . As I was leaving the daycare I started looking over the piles of papers I had picked up from his file . It included some of his artwork , a worksheet that hadn 't been touched , and a reminder that Thursday is PJ Pizza Party day . That means the kids get to wear their PJs to school . You do know what this means , don 't you ? It means that on Thursday morning when I DON ' T change him out of him PJ pants he 's going to throw a fit and insist that he MUSPosted by My mom volunteered to have Michael stay with her on Saturday night so that Andy and I could celebrate our anniversary . It was wonderful . Heavenly . Amazing . And , much needed . Andy and I were able to go out to dinner , see a movie , come home and play pool , and even sleep in on Sunday morning . It 's been a long time since we have had that much time to spend together and reconnect . It was a real treat , and I look forward to a time when we can make that happen a little more often that once every other year . There were a few amusing moments during our date night . The first one came as we were ordering drinks before dinner . Our waiter had that awkward feel that new waiters often have . His banter was a little awkward and he hasn 't mastered reading cues like coming over when we put the menus down . The first thing he did was ask if we wanted anything to drink . We both ordered alcoholic drinks . I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the glance . It 's the glance that Andy always gets when he orders a drink . It 's almost always followed by a request for ID , and Saturday night was no exception . Andy reached for his wallet while we both laughed out loud about it . It was entertaining enough when he was 26 , but at 36 it 's freaking funny . On my own , I think I 've been carded once in the past 15 years , and I 'm pretty sure the woman that did had poor eyesight . But , when I 'm with Andy , most waiters and waitresses realize that if you are going to card the man , you HAVE to card the woman . This guy didn 't know that until after he asked for Andy 's ID and realized that he had just indicated that I look OLD . He did finally ask for mine , but it was too late to pull it off . Dude , I know you thought I looked old . In Pennsylvania they are allowed to card you up until you are 31 . ( Which makes no sense . If they don 't card you , how can they know you are old enough not to be carded ? ) So clearly , I looked like I was over 31 to this guy . And , Andy looked to be no more than 20 . Let 's just say that this cougar is hot enough that she can lure in the jail bait . Posted by We have had amazing weather this spring . Once the rain stopped , that is . One of the activities Michael has been working on is to make booby traps for " fiefs " . As you can see , these are high tech do - hickeys that you place outside your front door to keep thieves away . You know , the ones that want to come in and steal all of Michael 's toys . Don 't worry , he also made 4 or 5 for the back door as well . So far , no toys have been stolen . Maybe we should try to patent them . We also have an amazing crop of dandelions this Spring . Which may have something do do with this : Yes , Michael is a chronic dandelion spreader . He 's not the only one in the neighborhood . However , I noticed something weird about our dandelions this year . They are mutating . Check out the stem on this one . If you can 't figure out what you are looking at , that is one big , thick stem . The multiple flowers at the top of the stem are all attached in one place and are squished together . However , they really are individual flowers . There a many of these mutant dandelions growing in our yard . It 's kooky ! Speaking of kooky , this is how Michael insisted on leaving the house on Saturday . I started to fight the battle to get him to change one of his shoes , but quickly realized it was a waste of time . So , I let him out like that . He played like that for an hour before one of the older kids commented that his shoes didn 't match . I was then required to go in and get the other sneaker before Michael would continue to play . Sigh . And finally , this is not a phone picture but I feel it 's worth posting today anyway . This is a picture of Andy and I five years ago today . He 's still as sweet and wonderful today as he was back then . It was the best decision I ever made . I finally gave in and realized that I was going to have to take a day off if I was going to start getting caught up on the many things I 've neglected over the past three months . My dream day off would involve relaxing and doing something to pamper myself , but I didn 't take yesterday off to dream . Instead , I started getting caught up . The first thing I did in the morning was to complete my taxes . I 've had all the paperwork together since February , but I haven 't had two hours of uninterrupted quiet time to sit down and make sure I get all the math correct . No , I don 't use tax software to do my taxes . I hate to spend money on something I can do myself , and if I 'm going to be completely honest , I actually enjoy doing taxes . It 's just like a big math word problem , but instead of getting a grade at the end , I get money ! Still , not my favorite way to spend a day off . My next step was to get my oil changed . It 's possible that I neglected to get my oil changed for over 10 , 000 miles . The recommended time is actually 10 , 000 miles , but even with synthetic oil , I 've never felt comfortable going that long between oil changes . Fortunately , was able to correct this problem with a half hour trip to Jiffy Lube . Aside from being forced to listen to country music and politely decline having every filter and blade on my car replaced for large sums of money , it wasn 't too bad . Still , not my favorite way to spend a day off . Next trip was to the post office . There was a long line when I got there . In that long line was a dad with a double stroller and twins . One twin was getting restless . I watched this go on for ten minutes until the frustrated dad finally called it quits and had to leave . I was so angry at everyone in front of him . Yes , they probably would have had to stand in line for an extra two minutes if they had let him move to the front , but come on . Have a little compassion ! I finally returned home after running some errands and decided to take a little time off for myself . I 'm trying to find some more paths to run on so that I can Posted by Or , at least that 's what I imagine Michael thinks at the moment . Up until recently our neighborhood has been filled with mostly boys , and poor M who get 's sucked into all the boy play . However , a few more girls have moved into the neighborhood , and they have the gall to do such a horrendous thing as play dolls with M . In public . When Michael wants to play with M . Can you imagine ? He was quite disgusted by this on Sunday evening and was forced to resort to desperate measures . I was instructed to go into the house and bring out super hero Popsicles for all of the girls . Being the sly child that he is , he used the Popsicles as a distraction from the dolls and then lured the girls over to the field so they would play ball with him . It was smooth . Last night he encountered K , another little girl that lives up the hill from us . They played on the rocks for a while until Michael decided he wanted to go to the field and play ball . K refused . He was confused . He was being rejected . He asked me to make her come . I explained that she was free to do as she pleased . He asked me to go get her a Popsicle . She didn 't want one . No matter what he did , she stuck to her guns , and played on the rocks . Eventually , he gave up . We walked down the hill and came across M riding her bike . Michael ran up and asked her to come play ball in the field . She said no . Michael was heart broken and tried , once again , to get me to make her play with him . I calmly explained that she didn 't want to , and that if he wanted to play with her , he had to do what she wanted to do . He didn 't like this one bit . He lucked out , another neighbor let his mini wiener dog out , and both Michael and M rushed over to play with the dog . However , I 'm sure the sting of rejection lingered for some time . As a mom , I 'm glad I was there to help him try to understand what was going on . As a woman , I 'm glad I was there to give voice to the rights of the girls that should not be trampled on . It would be nice if the important lessons were a little easier to learn , but sometimes a littlPosted by That 's it . I 've had it . This is getting ridiculous . Our weekend started out well . We spent a lot of time outside on Friday evening and Saturday morning with the neighborhood kids . The weather was chilly , but sunny . Perfect for riding bikes , playing ball , going down slides , running around like maniacs , and other fun stuff that little kids do . And Michael did it all . It was great to spend so much time playing . It all went down hill around 1 : 00 am Saturday night when Michael decided that he didn 't want to sleep , he wanted to go down stairs . He was quiet adamant about this too . In fact , he screamed and yelled about it until 4 : 30 in the morning when Andy finally laid down on the floor next to him and let him cry himself out . It was bad . We tried to figure out what was wrong . I asked about his ears , his tummy , I felt his head . Nothing . He said he was fine . . . he just wanted to go downstairs . The morning went OK . The only sign that anything was off was that he decided to ride in the shopping cart instead of walk . It makes shopping easier , so I was all for it . In the afternoon , he was very excited about going to the playground , and played nicely with the other kids . However , when we got home , he crashed and burned with a huge tantrum about not wanting to come into the house . He went full blown wild and finally just wore himself out . He asked for some milk and then crashed hard on the sofa . By the time he woke up , he was getting a fever . Crap . He did go out to play for a little while , but seemed to go downhill from there . Even with Tylenol he was getting pretty warm . At bedtime , he headed right upstairs and crawled into bed after brushing his teeth . Considering he normally insists on endless books , this was very surprising . It was a lot less surprising at 11 : 00 when his stomach started to revolt . Crap , crap , crap . I ended up sleeping on the floor with him in hopes of avoiding long screaming sessions or the need to get the Bissel spot cleaner out . He did pretty well through the night , but when he woke up at 4 : 30 he was still burninPosted by Yes , it 's time for another installment of Weird Weather . I know you are all so enthralled by this topic that you couldn 't wait until I posted about it again . Well my wonderful readers , your patience has been rewarded . I 'm here to bring you that latest news about weather you aren 't experiencing and couldn 't care less about . As all those snow pictures pointed out , we had a very snowy winter in South Eastern Pennsylvania . In fact , we had record breaking snows . It was so amazing that some of the snow that fell on December 19th was still around on March 19th . That was very unusual for this area . Following such a strange winter , the strange spring hasn 't been terribly surprising either . We are normally an " April showers bring May flowers " kind of place , however this year seems to be more of a " March torrential downpours bring April heat waves and horrendous allergies " kind of spring . The March rainstorms really were amazing . Unfortunately , in addition to losing our power during the worst , a number of our neighbors ended up with flooded basements . There have been a lot of insurance adjusters and carpet salesmen around lately . What is most concerning is that the ground is so saturated that water is still draining from our back yard common area and it hasn 't rained for a week . I really hope that it dries out some before the next big storm . So far for April , we have been having really warm weather . It was nice when warm was 65 degrees , but yesterday it hit 89 degrees . Add up all the rain and the warm weather and all of the plants are blooming early . The purple azalea that was blooming on April 16th when Andy and I got married has been in full bloom for days . After such a long winter , seeing all of the trees and plants in full bloom is refreshing . Well , until I step outside and try to breath . This is my worst allergy season in 21 years . And I 'm not the only one , lots of people are complaining about itchy eyes and sneezing fits . So , while a huge rainstorm would be bad right now , a little rain to wash away some of the pollen wouPosted by Michael has been having some tummy troubles thanks to the antibiotics that he just finished up . The amoxacillin was pretty kind to his tummy , but this stuff wasn 't . I was expecting it to . . . um . . . speed things up , but it did the opposite . It turned my once a day boy into a once every few days kid . In addition , he seemed to have some nausea as well . That 's bad enough , but add those new sensations to his newly found potty training skills and he ended up very confused a few times . He would say his tummy was telling him to go pee pee , but get in there and not be able to go . Then he would say he needed to throw up , and follow it up with a toot . It was very distressing for him and a number of times he ended up in tears because something in his tummy didn 't feel right , but he didn 't know what to do about it . He finished up the medicine on Sunday night ( am I the only one that only gets 18 5ml doses out of a 100ml jar of antibiotics ? ) and things are starting to get back to normal . Yesterday , things got moving again , and Michael was clearly relieved . He was in a much perkier and pleasant mood after taking care of business . However , he did have one confusing potty trip . He ran into the bathroom and told me he didn 't need my help . After a minute I heard him getting upset again , so I got up to see what was going on . I walked into the bathroom and this is what he asked me : Mommy , you need to squeeze my pee pee because there is a candy heart stuck in there that hasn 't dissolved and it 's blocking my pee . I just stood there staring at him . I mean really , how do you respond to something like that ? First thing , sorry about the title of yesterday 's post . It never crossed my mind when I typed 9 months that ya 'll might think I was talking about being pregnant . I didn 't mean to be such a tease . Back to the zoo . In addition to Michael climbing like a monkey and playing with other kids , I got to reflect on something else I 've seen with Michael recently . It 's the constant tug of war between self confidence and insecurity . On the playground , Michael has no problem running up to other kids and trying to initiate play . He just dives right in . It can be hard to watch because some kids don 't want to play . None of the kids have been mean about it , but it 's still not easy watching a bunch of 8 year olds dismiss him . It makes him sad , and part of me wishes I could fix that . But , it 's all part of growing up and learning boundaries . For the most part though , he 's been able to find someone to play with anytime we are at a playground . Knowing this about him , it 's interesting to see him hide behind my legs when we walk into a birthday party or are meeting a new adult . In his mind he has clearly defined " safe " places where he has no problem diving in head first , and cautious places where he wants to stand back and check things out before he sticks his toes in the water . He 's so sweet and shy when he 's unsure . He speaks softer and stands back more or hides behind me . He 'll watch everyone closely while he tries to figure out what 's going on . Once he does decided to give the new situation a try , he 'll enter slowly while gauging everyone around him . Sometimes this is slow , sometimes not . Once he is comfortable , a whole different child comes out . A loud child . An enthusiastic child . A somewhat pushy child . Once Michael is comfortable with you , he has no problem correcting you . This morning he made sure that his daycare teacher was 100 percent clear on which two dinosaurs were hanging from his belt . ( Spinosauros and Brachiosaurus . ) The generic " dinosaurs " was not sufficient . At the playground , while he may have been a little cautious aboPosted by Last summer I blogged about a woman trying to cheer Michael into climbing a web at the local zoo playground . He had climbed up to the top rung of this rubber lattice that looks like a spider 's web , but would not even consider trying to climb up the last bit onto the play structure . She cheered and clapped and coerced , and he dug in his heels . She was flabbergasted by the extent of his refusal . I just laughed quietly to myself at her wasted effort . With the gorgeous spring weather this weekend I decided to take Michael to the zoo . We hit the playground and he did this . He didn 't hesitate , he just scrambled right up and pulled himself over the edge . Then , he ran to the slide - which he was afraid of last summer - and slid right down . It 's amazing what 9 months and a few inches will do . It was amazing to watch him and compare his actions to last summer . Not only did he climb the web , he also climbed the rock wall and then monkeyed his way up this : Last year he wouldn 't even touch that ladder . He looked at it once and decided that he didn 't want anything to do with it . This year it 's no problem . But , there was something even more impressive going on here . In the past , I 've always had to hover near the playground equipment or else Michael would call me over and make me play with him . After a while , going down the slide with the little kids can get kind of old . Do you see the older boy following Michael up the ladder ? Michael was completely engaged in playing with the boy , and I was actually able to sit down on a bench in the shade . I 'm not entirely sure what they were playing , but Spiderman , pumpkins and butts were involved . Whatever it was , Michael had a blast , the other boy seemed to have a good time , and I got to relax for a few minutes . I guess this is just a little taste of the future when my little baby won 't need me there to hold his hand anymore . Don 't worry , Michael isn 't about to move out on his own or anything . In fact , he threw a spectacular tantrum about 15 minutes later when I made him leave the playground withPosted by One of my 500 in 2010 goals is to be able to run the 2 mile park loop , including the big hill , without stopping to walk . I set this goal last summer when I first started to run , but I never came any where close to actually doing it . That played a large part in me replacing my old recumbent exercise bike with the new upright bike with programmable workouts as well as my cross training effort on the elliptical . To make that two mile run and run up that hill , I needed to really step things up , so I did . A lot . What 's funny is that I wasn 't even planning on running yesterday . I knew the weather was supposed to start improving , but I had no idea just how nice it would be . It was perfect for a run , so Andy and I agreed on a workout schedule that allowed me to hit the park . With such short notice , I hadn 't really considered what run I wanted to do . I was thinking of just going out and running the hill over and over . I also considered doing the loop in the opposite direction - which means I 'd go down the big hill , but start and end the run going slightly uphill . However , something in me was just itching for my goal loop , and I decided to go with it . The moment I made the decision , I knew I was going to make the whole loop running . There wasn 't a moment during the run that I doubted that I would do it . I felt great when I started running . I felt even more amazing when I reached the top of the hill . By the end of the run I was positively exuberant . I did it ! I really , truly did it ! I ran two miles without stopping ! The red bold line on the map below shows my run . I run clockwise . The dreaded hill runs from High Arch Bridge up to the Hay Barn . I cannot wait to do it again . The best part is that there are many more miles of the park to run , and an even longer , steeper hill to conquer . I can 't wait to get started . I am a full time working mom with three year old son Michael and wonderful husband Andy . I figure you can either laugh at life or cry . I tend to do a bit of both . |
I had an instructor that once said that we would study more after we got out of school than we ever did while in class . Even though I have the utmost respect for that instructor , I had trouble believing him . Just like a teenager , as I grew up he got smart all of a sudden . By growing up I mean gaining experience as a paramedic . I have opened my paramedic text so many times in the past few weeks I am thinking that I may have to buy another one because the spine is wearing out . I have been recently fully cleared to ride with anyone . Lately my supervisor has made full use of this . I have been working with the round - robin of brand spanking new EMT 's and Intermediate 's , not even one new paramedic . One of my favorite shows to watch is ER . I have started collecting past seasons and my wife got me a few of them as stocking stuffers for Christmas . I have been watching them lately . It 's kinda funny , I have watched that show for a long time . But now it invokes a much different thought pattern . I don 't know if any of you readers out there watch ER , but as the name implies it 's about an ER and the doctors and nurses that work there . There are paramedics in the show , but they are all just extras . They do make us look good most of the time , they roll into the ER with their patients neatly packaged , ready to hand off care with a quick , concise report . Then they roll back out , usually unnoticed as the drama of the ER unfolds . The reason I mentioned this is that while I sit here watching this show and see the different types of trauma and medical patients that they treat , I wonder how I would treat that patient or that presentation if it were me . So that leads me back to the original topic of discussion . . . studying . When I see a presentation or just think about something that may happen . A situation that is unlikely , but nonetheless a possibility each day I go to work . That in turn leads me back to my text , protocol book and of course the Internet . It 's funny how things work . They don 't turn you loose until you have the experience on thePosted by I apologize to the readers who come back to my little corner looking for something to read and have been disappointed . With the new baby and the other two kids , the Wife , work , teaching and taking classes , I 've not had that much time to write . So here is the account of my last shift . . . We had a student rider to come and do his clinicals with us . Have you ever noticed that whenever a student comes , it 's either feast or famine ? Either you run the worst calls or absolutely nothing . Well , this student is a " white cloud " , meaning that we run nothing . Every time he has showed up I can count on being able to catch up on my sleep . I kinda hate it for the guy because my cert card is barely dry and I remember all too well what it was like to do field clinicals . I know that he wants to get out there and tube someone , push every drug we have in the box and shock people ' till all the batteries are dry . I 've offered to answer any questions he has . He 's asked a few , I showed him all about the monitor , CPAP , BIG gun , MAST trousers , the pressure infuser and any other piece of equipment that we have on the rig . We 've went over all 42 drugs in the box and he knows them by heart . So now we just sit around and watch TV or sleep . You know , just another day in EMS . Last shift , he had no sooner pulled his little hatch - back car with all the EMT stickers and red lights out of the parking lot than the tones went off . We didn 't stop for almost 8 hours . God , I wish they 'd let him ride for 24 hours instead of just 12 . First call was for a choking at a nursing home . Nothing to it , little old lady got choked up on her mystery meat and the nursing staff freaked . You shoulda seen the look on the doc 's face when we brought that one in . . . Next was a CVA ( stroke ) . Middle aged man had an acute onset of right - sided paralysis with blurred vision also in his right eye . No prior history except for diabetes and migraines . His symptoms were fully resolved way before we got there , and we only had a 4 minute en route time . He 's a little sweaty , but otherwise he Posted by My partner came to our service from the Big City EMS down the road . He has what I call the " Big City Attitude " most of the time . Don 't get me wrong , he is an excellent medic and when someone is actually sick , he is one of the good ones to have around . But he had no patience whatsoever . Especially when it comes to patients that fall into the " BS " category . We had a good day last shift , not too many calls . All but one were BLS , the other was just a simple diabetic . We sweetened her up and then she refused . She was a little old lady who had delt with her diabetes for over 20 years . Her husband had delt with it as well . All the while we were trying to start an IV he was up and moving around the little apartment they shared . You could tell he was nervous . He knew exactly what was wrong and that we would help her , it had happened many times before . But he was still anxious over his wife of over 40 years . My partner was getting irritated at the husbands actions and how he was worrying us all with his advise and him going on and on about how she hadn 't been taking care of herself as of late . I could see the growing frustration in my partner , so I stopped looking for an IV and got up to help the man look for whatever it was that he was searching for at the moment . I talked to him and offered reassurance that his wife was going to be OK . The look in his eyes was relief as someone was actually paying attention to what he had to say . The rest of the day was all BLS . Most of them at nursing homes . Another little old lady fell and now she was having hip pain . She was scared that her hip was broken . Even though there was no deformity , shortening or rotation , I handled her with the same care that I would with my own grandmother . A large lady had fallen out of her wheelchair while trying to get to the toilet . She was over 400 pounds and did not smell very well . She was having some trouble breathing and was embarrassed of being on the floor . We helped her up and I gave her one of our bedpans so she would not have to move from the bed Posted by Today this blog hit the 10 , 000 mark ! Thanks goes out to all those who have me linked on their blogs and the people that have come and read and commented . Thank you all very much ! BRM The very next shift we get called out for another MVA about a 1 / 2 mile from the one the shift before . It 's dark and it 's raining . . . again . We get there and it 's also another T - bone type collision . Deja vu , I think . Luckily , this one isn 't as bad . I had one patient that was sitting outside her car and crying . She had been wearing her seat belt and the airbag had deployed . I put a c - collar on and place her on the board and get her out of the rain and into the truck . A full assessment revealed some minor cuts and bruises . Overall she was a lucky kid , her car took a hell of a hit . We dropped her off at the ED and headed back to the county . Sometime after 2am we get a call for an unconscious . When we arrive , the house is small and cluttered . There are several people standing around this large man laying on his back on a bed in the living room . He 's unconscious , sweaty and barely breathing . The bystanders say that he just got back from a military hospital overseas . He had been shot 3 times in the back while in Iraq . He hadn 't been stateside for 2 weeks . His pupils were pinpoint and non - reactive . They said that he hadn 't taken anything , but the fire department that showed up to help found a bottle of morphine tablets that was empty . It had been filled 3 days before . We had our culprit . It took all four of us to get him loaded on a board and then to the truck . I wasn 't working with my regular partner , he had taken the shift off . I had another full - timer from another truck . He was real laid back and made me call all the shots on every good call we ever ran together . When we finally got the patient to the truck , everyone was looking at me for answers . I got everyone moving . Start assisting ventilation 's , get a blood sugar , start a line and get him on the monitor for starters . A minute or two later that 's all done and they are looking at me again as I finish taping down the line . I re - access his breathing and decide to intubate . I tell the fireman to try to put in an oral airway to see if the guy has a gag reflex . It goes in easilPosted by Most people say that everything comes in three 's . My experience is that everything comes in two 's . . . . Just after dinner we get a call for a MVA ( Motor vehicle Accident ) with a pin - in . We get to the scene and my partner drops me off at the first vehicle and then speeds the 100 yards down the road to the other vehicle . The van had moderate front end damage but no one was inside , which was a good thing . That usually meant that whomever was inside is OK , at least OK enough to move under their own power . It was night time , it was drizzling and there were lots of people standing around so it was hard to make out who might have been inside the van . I grabbed someone and asked and he points me to the 3 people sitting on the side of the road . I walk up and ask if they were indeed the passengers of the van and they said yes . I asked if anyone was hurt and they said no . They also said that they did not want to be taken to the hospital . About that time the fire department showed up and one of the guys asked me if I needed anything . I told him to do a quick check and get vitals on the three people sitting there and then if everything was OK , get the refusals . ( I had known this particular Fireman for awhile and had worked with him , so I trusted his judgement . ) I turned my attention down the road toward the other vehicle and see a mass of personnel surrounding it . I trot down that way to see if I am needed . My partner was about half in and half out of the car from the passenger side trying to assess the patient and figure out exactly where she was pinned at . She probably went for about 300 lbs and she was in a semi - compact car . A fireman was in the back seat holding c - spine and everyone else was either standing and watching or getting the rescue tools together to try and pop the door . I started my usual walk around the vehicle when someone hollered at me . I turn to look and there at the side of the road stands a woman holding a shirt to a girls forehead and there was blood all over the girls face and chest . Another teenage girl wPosted by Everyone that works in EMS knows that you talk with your co - workers in a certain language . You reference the calls that you ran by the circumstances surrounding it and not the patients name . This is the story of " The Haldol Lady " . We were having a pretty good day , not too many calls . We had taken a patient to the little hospital that we have in - county and were cleaning up after . Dispatch comes over the radio with a transfer for a " routine medical " at a nursing home , no other info . The call is all the way on the other side of the county so we get in and get on the road . We pull up at the facility and there are two CNA 's waiting outside for us . Hmmm . . . they don 't usually do that . Normally we have to hunt them down them down to glean the small amount of info that they have . I get out , yank the stretcher from the back and Another New Partner ( ANP ) and me start towards them . I notice that one of the young CNAs has a nice fresh bruise on her cheek . As we approach one of them says that they are glad that we were finally there to get her off their hands . " She 's been beating the crap out of us and we are fed up with it " , the other one says with a motion towards her bruised cheek . " You guys shouldn 't have any problems , she likes men " . Great , I think , another transport trying to keep away from a groping old lady . We wheel the cot down the hall to the room where a few other CNA 's and nurses are standing . I get the report . Elderly female , over 80 years old , getting increasingly belligerent and combative . History of frequent UTI 's , arthritis and mild Alzheimer 's but she had never been violent before . As I step tentatively into the room I see the woman in question . She is laying on her side , facing away from me . " Hey I 'm BRM from such - and - such EMS , what 's going on today ? " " Fuck you , you sumbitch ! Get the hell outta my room ! " Hhmmm . . . . not the response I was looking for . I turn and look at ANP to see if he has any thoughts on the subject at hand . To make a long story a little shorter , he doesn 't have any bright ideas either . All our ParamediPosted by I 've read Peter Canning 's books , both of them . In one he describes his school reunion . I 'm not going to get into detail , if you want that go read his books . Recently I went to my own high school reunion . I don 't think that I had as hard of a time as Mr . Canning , but it wasn 't easy . We didn 't have a lot of money and I wasn 't a great sports star . Needless to say , I wasn 't popular and got picked on quite often . I stood up for myself when I 'd had enough , but that never solved anything . My grades weren 't the best and I hung around with the wrong crowd . Sounds like a lot of high school kids huh ? Anyway , I get this invitation for the reunion and am immediately indecisive on whether or not to go . My wife is supportive and says that either way is fine with her . No help there . In the end I went , with Wife in tow . We had an OK time . I saw a few of my old friends and we had some laughs . By far the biggest topic of the night was how many times who had been divorced and how many kids did everyone have . The gossip of high school rears its ugly head . It was interesting to see all of the old popular people migrate to one another . And to see how they had fared . Most had gained much weight and topped the divorce list if they had even married at all . Call me a grudge holding bastard , but I found it extremely funny to see them in their drunken revelry . Just like old times . . . . The next biggest question was " What are you doing now ? " Closely followed by " Where are you living ? " The look in people 's eyes was one of fascination when I told them I was a Paramedic and that I had moved away from the place of my upbringing . I 'd had feelings of inadequacy going in . The feelings that most others would be doctors and lawyers and successful businessmen . That I would pale in comparison . Boy was I wrong . The president of our class is installing security systems , door to door . Another popular guy is literally digging ditches . The prom queen is an assistant manager at a drug store . Not that these aren 't honorable jobs . Trust me , I know that in these times , Posted by I turned the radio on as I drove home from work this morning . I tuned the FM band to an oldies rock station and " Don 't Fear the Reaper " was playing . Fitting , I thought . For the past week I 've been seeing dead people . I 've run more code blue 's this week than any other in my short history in EMS . The total is up to 11 I think , but really , who 's counting ? Only three of them have been actual working codes . The rest have been a mix of different varieties of suicides , fatal wrecks and the others were just found dead . Two of the codes were a hopeless cause . Both were unwitnessed arrests and both were asystolic when we got there . I worked them both because I felt like I needed to and other than the flat green line on the monitor there was no other reason not to . I didn 't even get any Epi blips with either one . It 's a statistical fact that there are more suicides attempts in the county that I live and work than in any other in my state . I don 't know why , but the people here just hate to live . I think I 've seen just about every kind of suicide attempt that there is . A man hanged himself naked in the front yard , his kids found him while they were going out the door to catch the bus to school . Another man put a hose from the tailpipe of his car into the interior and gunned the engine until he fell asleep and woke up dead . His wife of 23 years found him . A troubled woman ran her brand new Mustang at over 90 miles an hour straight into a concrete bridge pillar . A 16 year old kid put his hunting rifle under his chin and pulled the trigger with his toe . A 70 year old woman put her pearl handled revolver to her temple . All her affairs were neatly laid out on the couch in the front room . And pills . . . . Jesus , the people around here love their bottled death . The man with COPD found dead in his living room . His O2 and neb treatments almost within reach . The diabetic dead on his cold kitchen floor . His power had been turned off and someone had noticed the smell . The list goes on and on . The other code that I ran actually had a shot . His wPosted by I worked with an EMT yesterday . My partner went home sick early in the morning and the EMT in question was the only one that could come in on short notice . I 've seen him around a few times . He 's about done with Medic school but he 's not arrogant about it . Many of the students that are at the end of the class think that they know it all . I wonder if I was like that . . . I suppose I was . It 's funny , I 've not had my patch long , on one hand it seems like yesterday , on the other it seems like years . . . . Anyway , we had a few good runs and the call volume was back to normal . Which is good because with the baby and 2 toddlers at home , sleep is a thing of the past . I got woke up from a nap by a call for a pedestrian struck . At first I thought I was dreaming , well dream is too nice of a term . I thought I was having another nightmare . The dispatch info was almost the same : Pedestrian struck , small child , no other information at this time . As I realized that I wasn 't dreaming I got up and started for the truck and then I started sweating . When we got there , I took one look and I knew it wasn 't going to be as bad as last time . The child was laying on the ground , screaming . His mother was kneeling over him and the whole family was there as well . The kid had no real major threats . He had ran out behind a car and his lower leg had been run over . He had an obvious tib / fib fracture and a possible hip as well . We stabilized the leg and loaded him up . With the mother on board and the rest of the family in tow , we made our way to the hospital . And that was that . I breathed a sigh of relief once care had been transferred to the nurse . In the early hours just before dawn I was woken up again for a possible code blue , our talk for a person down and not breathing . We arrive and go inside . There is a middle aged woman lying face down in the bed . Her two small children are there and looking scared . The oldest one had called 911 just like she had been taught in school . There is a bottle of pills scattered across the floor below the bed . I roll her Posted by I 've finally created an e - mail account for the blog . So if anyone wants to comment or ask a question and doesn 't want to leave it on here , feel free . blueridgemedic11 @ yahoo . comBRM First shift back and let me tell you , I was ready . Don 't get me wrong , I love my Wife and Family . But I am not the type that can sit around the house for very long . I got my " Honey - Do List " done and several other things that I have been meaning to do around the house and yard and then . . . nothing . My son is of course a new - born and does nothing but eat , sleep and poop continuously . My wife won 't let me hold him all the time and God didn 't give me the equipment to feed him right now . So I was tired of watching the same movies on HBO and sitting around on my widening ass . Like I said , I was glad to go back to work just to have something to do . Some things changed while I was gone . I am no longer working with New Partner . Now I have Another New Partner . The last one got moved to another station that was closer to where she lives and now I am working with someone else . He 's been a Medic for a while , but hasn 't been with our company very long . While I think I will miss New Partner , me and Another New Partner ( ANP ) seem to get along well , so I think it will be OK . Our first day together was a fairly busy one . We ran about 8 calls . I know that 's not a lot for some of you out there but our calls take around 2 hours from dispatch till we get back to the station . So that 's approximately 16 out of 24 hours on the road . A normal day is about 3 - 5 calls , give or take . Most were routine BS calls , a fall , nausea / vomiting , anxiety attack , minor dyspnea and the like . The one that wasn 't made ANP and me scratch our heads . . . The call came out as a seizure . We get to the house and there is a young man laying on the floor having what looked like at first glance a seizure . But he wasn 't jerking around and he hadn 't pissed himself . No one was there but a female friend of his that was freaking the hell out . He was going in and out of these spasms and wasn 't responding to anything . His whole body would just lock up and then he started frothing at the mouth . ANP went to the truck to get things ready and with the help of a first responder I got hPosted by . . . . sometime in the next few weeks . I took a little time off from work to spend with the family unit . I 'll continue with the writing once I go back on shift . Until then . . . BRM My son was born a few days ago . I can 't begin to describe the feelings that I felt when I held him for the first time . There are no words in the English language to articulate it . . . . Ya 'll welcome my son , Kaleb Grey to the world . . . . BRM I got an award . . . . Thanks goes out to Sandy G ! Other blogs that I can 't live without and read almost every day . . . A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver , Baby Medic , Boobs , Injuries & Dr . Pepper , Rocky Mountain Medic andStreet Watch : Notes of a Paramedic . These are just a few , all the others on my " Great Reads " list are exactly that , great reads . I would recommend all of them . Thanks again Sandy ! BRM A few posts back , I spoke of The Calm . A commenter warned me of the storm that always follows it . I should have listened . . . On the way to work yesterday morning , I was wondering who I would be working with and if last shift was just a fluke . I speculated on the possibilities of working with the same New Partner ( NP ) again , or someone else . When I pulled up , her car was there and my suspicions were put to rest . She had made a point to get there before I did and was half - way through checking off the truck by the time I pulled in . With a big smile on her face she said hey and asked if I 'd slept late . Smartass . . Hmmm . . . I think this partnership will work out just fine . Everything went as usual for an hour or two , then all hell broke loose . The entire county exploded and all 5 trucks got a call in less than 15 minutes . Ours was a routine transfer from a nursing home to Big City Hospital for a " routine medical " , whatever that means . Well it turned out to be not - so - routine . Out patient was an elderly lady with decreased level of consciousness ( LOC ) and no blood pressure to boot . We got underway and amazingly I got an 20 gauge IV in her arm . After a bucket - load of fluid , her pressure hadn 't changed and her LOC hadn 't improved . I couldn 't find anything else wrong with her , 12 - lead was good , her Foley catheter had urine in it and it was clear of junk , she wasn 't running a fever , lungs were clear , pupils were reactive but sluggish . I was thinking maybe stroke , maybe an MI without ECG changes , hell I was grasping at straws by this point . I even gave some Narcan in case it was Opioid , even though her pupils weren 't pinpoint . No matter what was causing this , I knew I had to get her pressure up . So I started a dopamine drip and it worked ! This action might seem very mundane to a lot of my readers and colleagues , but this was the first time I had done it , ever . Even in all the clinical 's , I had never even seen one started . Needless to say I was nervous , but I couldn 't help grinning as I watched her pressure rise to 96 by palpation andPosted by My service told me that I would have at least six months before I was cleared to work as a solo medic . With the shortages , I had a feeling that it wouldn 't take that long . Yesterday I showed up for work and my regular partner wasn 't there . I usually show up 15 - 20 minutes early so I can get things done and not be in a huge hurry . Drink a little coffee , talk to the crew that is going home , that kind of thing . At 2 minutes till 7 , in walks this brand new medic . I know her , but I 've never worked with or around her . I 've not had my patch for even 3 months yet , she has had hers about a week . " You lost ? " I ask . " Nope , I 'm working with you . " she replies . Oh Shit . About this time the station phone rings and I go to answer it . It 's my supervisor and he 's telling me what I just found out . Apparently 2 other medics had called out sick at the last minute and he couldn 't get it covered with anyone but her . My partner got moved to another truck to work with a Basic EMT . He goes into his " pep talk " saying that I will be fine and that I am a lot stronger medic than I give myself credit for . Sheepishly I say OK and hang up the phone . We get all the station duties done and go to breakfast . No calls yet . Me and Partner For the Day make small talk and I take a little nap in the recliner . I wake up and get some lunch . Still no calls . My first call as a cleared solo medic was the most mundane that comes . A routine transfer from a nursing home to a doctors office , then wait and return . The next call was for a possible suicide . We staged for about 2 hours and then got cancelled by the cops , I never found out what happened on that one . We then went and got supper and back to the station . The tones went off again for an allergic reaction , bee sting . The first responders were giving us a short report while we were en route and it sounded like a decent call . We get there and found out differently . He was having a reaction , but nothing " life threatening " . A little O2 and benadryl and he was fine , we transported him to the local ED anyway . My supervPosted by I was sound asleep when the tones went off . I cracked open one eye and listened to the dispatcher give out the call . 24 year old male . Abdominal pain . Great . I get up , put my uniform shirt on and make my way to the truck . My partner was right behind me . We drove out to the middle of nowhere to a single wide trailer with crap laying everywhere all around it . Up the rickety steps , inside the house and we see our patient . A rescue squad member that I knew was trying unsuccessfully to get a blood pressure on the guy , yelling at him to sit still . It wasn 't working . Our patient was rolling around on the couch yelling . At first I couldn 't understand what he was saying , then it came clear . " My belly button is gonna fall out ! " I tried to keep from snickering and took a look at my partner and saw that he was trying to do the same . I made my way through the trash heap that was the living room to the guy . Then started in on my assessment . He was indeed a 24 year old male that said he was having abdominal pain . He had went to the local hospital earlier that day with the same complaint and was sent home . He had been having this pain for 2 months , non - stop , with no relief . I started to ask him the pain scale thing and didn 't even get 2 words out of my mouth before he screamed 12 ! 12 ! it 's a 12 ! I took it that he had heard that question before . Wonderful . No other medical problems and no medications . At least none that were prescribed by a physician . Although he did have some laying on the table next to the couch that must have been prescribed by the local ABC store and his trusty neighborhood chemist . There was a definite odor of alcohol around him and his beard , mustache , nose hairs and eyebrows were singed . As we started to get him up and make our way to the stretcher he stated something that I hadn 't heard before . " I think I swallowed a monkey and he is trying to eat his way out of my stomach ! " What ? I must have heard that wrong . Nope . I heard it right . He kept saying it all 18 minutes of the transport . He wasn 't sure how he swallPosted by . . . . to all those who left a comment on my last post . It humbles me to think that there are still people out there that care about another persons suffering and pain . This job tends to put you in the mindset of otherwise . I will definitely have to try some of the things that were suggested . I guess the thing that bothers the the most is the fact that I will soon have a son of my own . The dream took on new form once my mind wrapped itself around this idea . It 's like I was the father of the dead child . I don 't know how if could handle loosing my son . I appreciate all the comments and well wishes from everyone . BRM I woke the other night choking down a scream , sweating and trying not to wake my Wife . I couldn 't really remember what the dream was about at first . I just knew that it seemed familiar , like I 'd had it before . I sat up and went to the bathroom and splashed the sweat from my brow with some chilly water . As I looked up into my face in the dim light of the small nightlight by the sink , the dream came back to me with a vengeance . For just a second , I wasn 't looking into my own eyes , but that of another man . A man screaming with rage , terror and grief . I gripped the edge of the sink and stared back into the reflection that didn 't seem like a reflection as I remembered something that I thought I had long forgotten . But we never forget do we ? I don 't think so , even though we try , we never forget . Just about anyone who has spent time on the streets as a cop , firefighter , or paramedic can tell you stories of their nightmares , if you can get close enough to them to get it to come out that is , this is one of mine . . . . Awhile back I was riding around in my truck , not doing much of nothing when my fire department / rescue squad got a dispatch : Pedestrian struck . I flipped on the blinkers and motored over that way . I was the third person on scene . The first was a fireman who didn 't have much in the way of medical training , but eager to help . The other was a classmate of mine from early medic school . The scene was thus : A large sedan parked at the end of 10 - 15 feet of black marks on a curvy residential street , 10 - 15 bystanders that had come from out of their homes to gawk and one 5 year old child laying in a spreading pool of his own blood . At this point I went into my " EMT Mode " - no emotions , just get the job done . I walked up and asked the fellow classmate what he had . I 'll never forget his answer , " It ain 't good BRM " . As I was walking up , surveying the scene , I couldn 't see the child in his entirety . I trusted the classmate for the hands - on stuff for the moment , and I was the only one at the time with any supplies whatsoever . So IPosted by I said in one of my last posts that I would get back to the topic of to go or stay with an EMS service . I got several great comments and I thank all those who did . I am gonna take a minute to talk about my service and you can tell me if you would leave . . . We are a smaller , rural service . About 60 total employees . We run 5 trucks at 4 different stations . The shortest transport time to the Big City is about 20 minutes , the longest is 1 1 / 2 hours , and that is going emergency traffic . We do have a small in - county hospital , but they only have about 130 beds and the ER has 5 , only one of which is behind actual walls and not a curtain . We also have an urgent care / emergency room / lab / CT scanner facility . Not much goes there except a cardiac arrest and very minor stuff . It 's most beneficial to the local doctors office 's for the use of the lab facilities , X - Ray and CT scanner . Neither of the in - county facilities have an actual MD on scene 24 hours a day . Most times you get a PA or NP with a doc on call . Sometimes you only get a nurse if the doc - in - the - box was out of rolling MD 's when they needed one . Not sure how they get away with this , but it happens . We work a 24 - on , 48 - off schedule like most other services in the area . There are a couple that work 24 - on and 72 - off , but only one is within driving distance . The pay here is on par with the area as well . Of course the Big City service pays a little more , but we are at the top of the average for the state . Benefits are decent . For employee 's the insurance is free , and that includes medical , dental and vision . There is a few other plans for employee and spouse , employee and dependant ( for a child ) , and a family plan . They are all decently priced . We also have the option of secondary insurance if the employee chooses . The only thing that is not covered under the county policy is life insurance , but you can get that through the secondary company or own your own . We also have one million in malpractice insurance provided by the county for each employee . Con - Ed is also provided foPosted by Been awhile since I last posted . Sorry to those readers that come looking . The Wife and I went on a little pre - baby vacation , which was very much needed . I will post in the next day or so . BRM I 've made comments in other posts about my service being shorthanded when it comes to Medics . This has become an understatement . I have only worked for 2 EMS services . The first was a Basic transport service . It started out like many others , a small Mom and Pop operation where the owner still ran calls on the truck . Eventually , sadly , they got a little too big for their britches and forgot about the little people that made them what they were . I left them for several reasons , the major being an increase in my education and I couldn 't use it there . Other reasons included several disagreements with the management and the overall day - to - day grind of the place . It just wasn 't what I signed on for . So I left . Now I have been with my current service , an ALS service , for about a year and a half . Not that long by many standards , and I completely agree . But my seniority is quickly growing . This is due to Medics leaving and leaving quickly . In that year and a half about 15 senior Medics have left . And I 'm not talking about Medics that have been here for a year or 2 . I 'm talking about 5 - 15 year Medics . Some left because of Nursing school , we all know that Nurses on average make a hell of a lot more money , so I can understand that to some degree . Others leave because of personal disagreements with the management , which is inevitable , first rule of management should be that you can 't make everyone happy . But the rest ? I don 't really have a clue . We have lost a lot of people to " Big City EMS " just down the road . They pay a little more , not much , but a little . Their call volume is 2 - 3 times greater , they have 3 - 4 times as many employees and they have the availability of 12 hour shifts instead of 24 . They can have a call completed from dispatch to return to quarters in less than an hour . They have a major hospital inside the county and that is where they transport everything , so their turn around time is quick . To me this is a bad thing , you don 't get a chance to be a Medic . They vary rarely even start an IV because they can load Posted by |
Word came yesterday that my Aunt Grace died near Atlanta . She was the wife of my Uncle Bill , who was my father 's brother . He died about 18 years ago . Uncle Bill and Aunt Grace lived in Atlanta pretty much their entire life together . They were well - to - do , and she liked the life in Atlanta society . In some ways , she was a little standoffish , but in other ways she was very caring . Just when you thought you had figured her out , she would surprise you . For example , she used to dispise going to Greenwood to visit Grandmother . After all , Greenwood was a small town , and it wasn 't Atlanta . It didn 't have much to offer in her mind . But , in her later life , she moved to Greenwood and lived there for a few years . We all thought that was funny , but Aunt Grace was determined not to be pigeon - holed . Even though she was getting older , she would drive herself in her Cadillac everywhere . She had a small dog called Coco who was her companion for many years . When Uncle Bill was alive , they built a log cabin in their backyard , and turned it into a show place . After he retired , they were going to move to an antibellum house outside Atlanta . They were to sign the papers on a Monday , and it got hit by lightning on Sunday and burned to the ground . They kept their house in Atlanta . I used to get in trouble with my parents about what I used to call Aunt Grace . I would refer to her as " George Washington " . With her white hair , standing up straight , her high forehead , and her sharp nose , she looked to me as George on the one dollar bill . I didn 't mean any disrespect . She came to my father 's funeral in Greenwood by herself , which was the last time I saw her . In the last year , her health started to get worse . It was clear that her time was short . My cousin Ann Foster did a great job in taking care of her . She was a very independent woman . Aunt Grace , we loved you . My favorite book of all - time is " Being There " by Jerzy Kosinski . It is the story of a man , who was a gardener who got displaced . Through a series of misadventures , he becomes the nation 's foremost philosopher and perhaps candidate for President . A simple man with little brains who loves one thing - - television . It is a great story about how our society makes people famous , who don 't deserve to be famous . If you don 't want to read the book , which isn 't very long , you can watch the film starring Peter Sellers . It was close to the last role he played . He did a brilliant job . Andy Warhol talked about everyone would get that 15 minutes of fame . Marshal McLuhan spoke on the medium is the message or massage , depending on your point of view . Our society promotes fame and fortune . There are famous people out there who shouldn 't be famous . I am not talking about those folks who do criminal things to be famous . I am talking about folks with no talent who get famous . Consider William Hung . He couldn 't sing , but he became a joke and actually released a cd of music . There are a lot of other examples . But , back to me , since this blog is about me and my world . TV has shaped my life . Movies too . Music too . But , mostly TV . My values and character has been shaped by TV and some movies . I guess it is a sad state of affairs , but I watched a lot of TV growing up . Kids shows , westerns , comedies , variety shows , the list is endless . I wasn 't allowed to watch really violent shows at first . Later on , I got to watch those . What if we didn 't have a TV ? I don 't know . There was a kid in our high school who didn 't have a TV . He was a brainiac . Does that mean that TV corrupts and makes everyone dumb down ? No , because there are a lot of stimulating shows on TV , but sometimes you just need mindless fluff . If you read " Being There " or see the movie , you will know something more about my psyche . And thus , something more about me . Be afraid . Be very afraid . I was thinking about the thought process that parents have in naming their babies . Now , before anyone has any questions , I am not thinking about this because of any impending event in my life . I don 't have any children and probably never will . But , I was named for my Mother 's father - - Walter Merrill . He was a judge and lived in Alabama . Thus , my full name is Walter Merrill Durst ( the first ) . My mother had a brother named Walter , too . For a long time , my Uncle Walter thought I was named for him , but I was actually named for my Grandfather . My brother was named for my father , who was John Kemp Durst . Some would refer to Daddy as " senior " , and my brother as " junior " , but in fact , Daddy was John K . Durst III , and my brother is John K . Durst IV . So , you have those people who name their kids for famly members . Then , there are other creative ways . One friend of mine is named Aubrey . She was named for a wonderful song called " Aubrey " by Bread . If you aren 't familiar with it , I am sure it is on iTunes . Check it out . It fits my friend Aubrey . Then , there is my friend Brandi . She was named for the song " Brandy " by Looking Glass . The song was a strange choice , based on what it is about - - a bar maid . But , it makes for a good story . Then , there is my friend Joni . She was named for a singer named Joni James . Her father heard a song by her on the radio and decided that would be a nice name for his new daughter . Some people name their children based on Bible characters . The trend now is to either use last names as first names or as some sort of new - age names . When Frank Zappa named his kids Moon - Unit and Dweezil , people laughed . But , other celebrities wanted to make statements with their childrens ' names . If anyone is reading this , who will have to face this issue down the road , please think of one thing . It is okay to be cutesy or thoughtful , and it is okay to give a name that expresses character . But , also think of if your child will be picked on by their peers because of thier name . If they go to a fancy private school , like manPosted by I have noticed recently that there are a lot of followers out there , but not many leaders . That is in traffic . If you are on a four - lane highway ( or more ) , there are far more people in the right lane than the left . Okay , on freeways , the left lane is for a faster flow . Don 't you just hate it when the slow people get in the left lane on the freeways ? Especially when it is rush hour ? But , I am not talking about freeways . I am talking about the city streets . Recently , I have noticed that it is comfortable to be in the right lane , even if you are not turning right . The left lane can be empty , but everybody is in the right lane . Maybe they are having a party , and I wasn 't invited . But , I am looking at the left lane , completely open , and nobody but me is on it . Let 's give you an example . In Greenville , there is a big mall called Haywood . In fact , it 's about the only mall in Greenville . They say over a hundred stores are in it . People from miles around come to this mall . It is right by an interstate / freeway . The main road that goes by the mall is called Haywood Road . It is a very busy street with lots of other stores and restaurants lining both sides leading to the mall . If you are coming up the road , with the mall on the right , the right lane is used for turning into the mall . So , you would think that all those people in the right lane would be going to the mall . But , Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ! ! ! Some do turn , but the majority are just following the one in front , when the left lane is open to get around these people . I don 't know , but if I have to get somewhere , the last thing I want to do is to be stuck in traffic , when there is a way of getting around the slowpokes . Now , I do not have a lead foot . I used to , when I was younger , but I have realized that the older I get , the slower I drive . But , for goodness sake people . Take the opportunity to look around and see that there is another lane you can get into . But , if you insist on being in the right lane , and you aren 't turning into the mall , watch the grass groPosted by I am going to a funeral tomorrow for a woman , who could be best described as the mirror - image of my Mother . Her name was Frances Snipes . She and her husband Roger knew my parents in New Orleans around the time I was born . In fact , Roger was one of my father 's students . When Daddy went to Columbia to be head of the South Carolina Baptist Convention 's Sunday School Department , he asked Roger to be his right - hand and had up the Adult work . The Snipes were so close to our family , that my father would often call me " Roger " instead of " Walter " . Mrs . Snipes and my Mother had many things in common . For one , they looked a lot alike and could have been sisters . They also loved to read . They had three children - - Vonda , Cynthia and Stephen . Vonda was the closest to my age . She was the one who invited me to join the youth choir on January 4th , 1970 at Kilbourne Park Baptist Church . She was the catalyst that effectively saved my lfe . I would be dead now , if it hadn 't been for that invitation . I taught Steve how to read . So , I have a lot of history with that family . When I decided to leave Macy 's last year , Frances Snipes was the first person that I told . We rejoiced in the decision . The next day , she and Roger came in the store , and we had a prayer on the floor . Roger has been the one with ill health , having heart problems . Frances was the one with the strength , but she was called to Heaven first . We cannot plan things like that . We always thought that Daddy would outlive Mother , but that was not God 's plan . So , the next two days will be difficult . The visitation will be this afternoon , and I will see a lot of people I haven 't seen in years , but it will be just like yesterday . The funeral tomorrow should be a celebration . A celebration of love , faith , and going forward . But , there will be tears . When someone dies rather suddenly , you can 't prepare for it as well . You must hold on to your faith . It is okay to cry . When my Mother died , many people referred to her as " a lady " . Frances Snipes was a lady . I wish there were more of tPosted by Thanks for indulging me in reliving my Europe experiences . It was a very interesting trip . Some things I couldn 't write about , but you got the gist of the trip . Maybe I 'll find a rich American widow to take me back . Okay , so it has been three weeks since I could write about current stuff , and some things have happened . The Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina , Andre Bauer , wanted me to meet with his chief of staff Jim Miles . So , I went to Columbia and talked with him about me and what I would like to do . There doesn 't seem to be any openings in his office , but it was good to meet with him , and perhaps get my foot in the door . I want to make a difference in people 's lives . I also have a real talent in finding lost souls . So , here is hoping that I will be able to help others , but not in a retail vein . For several months , I have been working with my friend Joni about her trying to decide whether she wants to leave Macy 's or not . She had been there for 22 years , but things had gotten pretty bad for her . They kept heaping on jobs for her , but was not getting the support that she needed . One of her good friends died around Christmas . Another got hurt . She had surgery on her wrist . Her father has heart problems . So , she made her decision , and I think it was the right one . She realized , as I did , that there is life after Macy 's . There is a world out there . Yes , it is a little scary , but life is too short . Joni is a very caring person . She cares about others , and I treasure our friendship . Maybe we can do something together in our quest to make a difference , but for now , she just needs to decompress . Well , I guess that 's all for now . No , I haven 't seen the new Batman movie . Maybe later . The day had come that we had been looking forward to and dreading at the same time . The tour was over , and we were flying home . We had been to England , Italy , Israel , West Germany , East Germany , Switzerland , France , and Spain . All in 21 days . We had experienced a lot of stuff . We had fun and fear . There had been laughter and tears . We had even learned some things about the history of other places , as well as learning about ourselves . Now , it was time to go back to our home lives . Sandra and Talula never liked to be photographed without makeup , so I made a point to take a few pictures of them that morning , before boarding the bus to take us to the airport . They didn 't appreciate it , but we were all in an up mood . It was a time of anticipation . " Tie A Yellow Ribbon " was our song . We got to the airport and boarded the 747 for the flight home . One of the ladies on our tour had her sword letter opener confiscated . She protested , saying that she had no desire to hijack a plane with a letter opener , but they took it away and didn 't give it back . Never once did they ask me about my pen knife , which could have done more harm than her letter opener . We took off and realized what a special adventure we had . There were smiles and tears . And exhaustion . The plane landed briefly in Lisbon Portugal . We asked the flight attendant how long we were going to be there , and could we go into the airport , and she said we probably shouldn 't , so I went out on the tarmac , just to say I was on Portuguese soil . Once again , we took off for home . The plane was packed with people . The movie shown in our section was the comedy " Ten from Your Show of Shows " with Sid Caesar . It was very funny . If you haven 't seen it , you should . I could also see the musical " 1776 " from my seat in the next section . The 8 - hour flight was pretty long . I tried to pass the time the best I could . Some people slept . Others played cards . I had written a song in Jerusalem called " Save the World for the Children " . I wrote it from our experiences with the children in NazarePosted by Our tour of Barcelona started off with a trip to a cathedral . It was very pretty . While we were inside , looking at a chandelier , Sandra pulled out some glasses to look at it . I said something to her about not knowing she wore glasses . She said she only wore them to look at beautiful things . That was a surprise , as I had known her for almost two years . We then went to an art museum that had some more Picassos . And , we saw a statue of Columbus pointing to the New World , which is where we were headed tomorrow . We went to a artisan place to see glass made and other crafts . One of our tour ladies bought a sword letter opener which would be confiscated the next day by the airline security . We got back to the hotel and had lunch at a restaurant next to the hotel . When we got our bill , we about had a heart attack , because it was thousands of pesedas , but after some calculating , it was only about $ 5 . The girls and I went back to the 9 - story department store to do some more shopping . They sold records , and I wished I had bought some Spanish Beatles records . But , that was another opportunity lost , like the 1 - carat diamond necklace for $ 150 in Israel . We looked into going to the beach , but it was 30 miles away , and we would have to take the train , so we decided not to go to the beach . Toward the end of the afternoon , Sandra asked me to go with her to the post office to make the long distance call to Jim to tell him she wasn 't marrying him after all and don 't bother to pick her up at the airport tomorrow . We got to the post office , and after a few gestures and attempts to communicate what she wanted , she got a line to the US . She went into a private booth , while I waited . After her call was over , she came out and said she had talked to Jim . On our walk back to the hotel , I could tell she was upset . I don 't know what Jim told her , but she told me that she had decided to marry him after all . I was crushed , but that was that . No debate . " If you can 't be with the one you love , love the one you 're with . " And to top it off , when I Posted by We got up the next morning , and it was raining . We got on the bus and headed for the airport to fly to our last destination - - Barcelona , Spain . On the airplane , Sandra told me that she had decided not to marry Jim back in the States . She said she was going to call him to tell him not to pick her up at the airport , when we got back in a few days . As the plane was descending to the Barcelona airport , we flew over the Spanish Riviera , and we thought it would be great to go to the beach . People were waving at us flying over them . When we would get to the airports on the trip , we would just go from the plane , through the terminal , and to our bus . So , I was doing that in Barcelona . I heard a man behind me yelling " Alto Alto " . I didn 't speak Spanish , so I just kept walking . I heard him again yelling " Alto Alto " . I knew alto was a singing voice , but I was a baritone . Then the man , who was a Spanish soldier , stuck his machine gun in my face , and said " Alto " . I figured that he was saying " Stop " , as I didn 't have to go to the bathroom anymore . It seems that they required us to go through customs , so I did . I tried to tell him I was an American , but that didn 't seem to matter . Spain was being ruled by Franco and was still something of a dictatorship . There were signs and pictures of Franco everywhere . We got to our hotel , and it was far from being a four - star hotel . There were speakers in the rooms that broadcasted music . There was a woman on our tour , who was a Spanish teacher . She found the same thing about the Spanish language that I did about French . Her Spanish was not the same as they spoke in Barcelona . The Spanish she knew was Mexican Spanish . So , she could pick out certain words but not much else . We went walking around the city and found a 9 - story department store in the center of the city . They had everything , so naturally the girls and I went shopping . During our visit there , I got lost from the girls for a few minutes . It was a rather frantic time , but we found each other again before going back to the hotel . SanPosted by Sunday in Paris . It was a beautiful day . We started our tour at the Louvre . We were warned not to take flash pictures , so of course some of our crowd did , and got in trouble . I took some non - flash pictures , and they were hard to see but turned out okay . The highlight was the Mona Lisa , but there were a lot of classic art there . From the Louvre , our bus took us around Paris and saw some sights . We ended up at the Cathedral of Notre Dame , where we went to a service . I didn 't understand the language , but I fell in love with the Catholic style . It was a very moving experience . We went to the Arch de Triumphe , and I almost got run over by cars , as I tried to get a picture . Folks didn 't want to stop for pedestrians . We drove to the Museum of Modern Art and saw some Picassos . I was used to interpret the art for others in the group . Outside of the museum , there was a guy on roller skates dancing . There was also a nice view of the Eiffel Tower , and I took pictures of Sandra and Talula sitting on a wall . Unfortunately , we did not get to go to the tower itself . After the tour was over and got back to the hotel , the girls wanted to go shopping . We went by a perfume store . Sandra said that Paco Rabanne turned her on , so naturally I bought a bottle . We got back to the hotel . After dinner , I went for a walk . I walked along the Seine and ended up at the Tuilleries . It had gotten dark , and I was sitting near a fountain . I was alone , but noticed a guy getting closer to me . I started to walk away , and he began to follow me . I got the impression that he was going to rob me , so I began to run . He ran behind me . I lost him by running through traffic along four blocks before getting back to the hotel . I thought I was fluent in French , having had five years of French in school . That was until a man came up to me on the street . He started a conversation with me , and he was talking a mile a minute . The only thing I could pick out was that he was asking directions . My fluent French ego was crushed , when I had to tell him in French that I dPosted by It was Saturday . We left Lucerne by train to go to Paris . The four girls and I had a compartment along a narrow corridor . It seems like everytime we had an opportunity to relax on our trip , things happened that did not allow us to do what we wanted to do . This train ride was no different . There were some Portuguese soldiers on the train , which was packed with people heading to Paris . They were supposed to be in the economy area of the train , but they wandered into our section and stared at the girls through the glass door of our compartment . I locked the door and put my feet up on the latch . They were trying to get in the door . We called for the conductor to come and chase them away , but they came back . It gave us a real sensation of what animals at a zoo experience by people making faces at them and trying to impress them . I had been wearing a fake wedding ring on the trip that I used in a play in college . As one soldier was staring at Sandra , I pointed to the ring and pointed to Sandra . The soldier pointed to his finger with no ring and pointed to Sandra . It was getting pretty scary . The conductor came back and chased them away a second time . We were then able to go to the dinner car and have lunch . After lunch , we tried to sleep for a while , as the train went through the French countryside . Sandra put her head on my lap . As I stroked her hair , she looked up and mouthed the words " I love you " . I mouthed to her " I love you too " . She smiled and went to sleep . Maybe in Paris , we could be together . I decided that we would go to Maxim 's in Paris . The fanciest restaurant I knew . I was so looking forward to our time together . They made the announcement that Paris was coming up . The girls awoke , and we saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance . It was very romantic . When we got to the hotel in downtown Paris , it was in a wonderful location . It was on the Place d ' Opera . At the other end of the street was the Paris Opera House . A few blocks away was the Louvre . Close by was the Tuilleries Gardens . As we were unpacking , SandraPosted by The morning started with a bus trip to Mount Pilatus , one of the many in the area within the Alps . We got up to the top of the mountain to find a lodge , as well as many black birds flying around . The four girls wanted me to take a picture of them sitting on a wall with the mountains in the background . As I was getting ready , Mr . Vivian told me that he wanted two other women in our tour to be in the picture too . He said we had been ignoring them . Yeah , so ? We reluctantly let them in the picture , but it was not a pleasant shot . I was glad I had my jacket , because it was pretty cold up there . We took a ski lift back down the mountain and then headed back to Lucerne . The afternoon was free . I saw swans in a lake , eating whole apples , and watching the apples go down the swans ' necks . The four girls and I went shopping that afternoon in the old city of Lucerne . We came upon a crystal shop . When we went in , we got roses from the shopkeeper . Very nice touch , even if we didn 't buy anything . Sandra wanted an Omega watch and saw how cheap they were being sold . We had gone to a diamond factory in Israel days before , and they had a one - carat diamond in a necklace for $ 150 . I wanted to buy it for her , but I couldn 't afford it . So , now that we were in Switzerland , I wanted to do something nice for her . As we headed back to the hotel , we saw the movie theatre in the next block . I told her that we should go to the movies . We looked into it and found that the film was in French . She said she wouldn 't understand it , but I was fluent in French , so I told her that I could translate it for her . She said okay , as we wanted to have some time alone together . After supper in the hotel , Judy , Sha and Talula said they wanted to go out walking around the old part of the city . Sandra said she wasn 't feeling too well and looked at me , and I said I wasn 't feeling too well either . We were trying to stay out of the walk , so we could go to the movies . But , Mr . Vivian said that if the other three wanted to go for a walk , then I had to go with them Posted by We left Weisbaden , and I found out that the park I sat in the night before was in front of a casino . Great , I could have gambled . So , we headed on toward our next stop , which was Lucerne , Switzerland . Our bus went through the Black Forest region of Germany . It was a beautiful section of Germany with quaint houses that looked like they had not been touched by war . We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that served bottled water . The labels had my last name ( Durst ) on them , so I took one with me . After lunch , our bus pressed forward , and we arrived at the border between Germany and Switzerland at a place called Rheinfall . It was on the Rhine River , and it was where there were waterfalls and rapids along the river . It is truly the most beautiful place I have ever seen in the world . If you ever get a chance to go , you need to . Although there are some tourist areas around it , the area is for the most part unspoiled . We got back on the bus and continued on into Switzerland . We passed by Zurich and got to Lucerne . We were at the base of the Alps , and the temperature was colder than what we had seen before . From 127 degrees in Israel just a few days before to 50 degrees now . It was a bit of a shock . Thankfully , I had my jacket . Our hotel was centrally located in the middle of the city . There were shops nearby , as well as a movie theatre . We were pretty tired from our trip and went to bed . We had seen a lot of very pretty sights that day . Especially Rheinfall . As we left the hotel for the airport , we got our passports back . I guess nobody in our group were spies , or they didn 't find out what happened to us in Jerusalem . We flew out of Berlin and went back to Frankfurt , where we saw the giant cow again . We then got on a bus for a tour of the German countryside . We went to several towns including Rudescheim , which has one of the smallest streets in the world , or at least that 's what they said . We also went to Koblenz , where Sandra 's father was during World War II . The bus had a radio that was tuned to Armed Forces Radio , and we got to hear pop music . It was so refreshing . Gilbert O ' Sullivan 's " Get Down " was a favorite , and " Tie A Yellow Ribbon ' Round the Old Oak Tree " became our theme song . We changed the line " It 's been three long years " to " three long weeks " . Also , Sandra would take naps on the buses . We laughed a lot about her sleeping with her mouth open , but she denied that . I got a picture of her doing that and showed her later . She was amazed . We got on a tour boat on the Rhine for a supposedly three - hour tour . We saw castles and other stuff . We were amazed at the farmers who were growing corn on the sides of mountains . Cows were even grazing on the hills . How they didn 't tumble down , I will never know . The trip continued for six hours . It turned out that we were going upstream , which made it so long . Everyone spent the time differently . Some just enjoyed the sights . Some napped . Others interacted with the boat crew . Sandra used to say , to quote a Stephen Stills song , " If you can 't be with the one you love , Love the one you 're with " . When we finally docked and got off the boat , I took a picture of Sandra coming off the boat . There were 22 guys from the crew watching her through the windows of the boat . We got back on the bus and went to Weisbaden , where we were going to spend the night . By now , we were almost two weeks into our trip . It was a little misty that night , kind of like what we had seen in London . There was a big park across from our hotel . I went over tPosted by People have often wished to go back in time . Maybe to right a wrong . Maybe to say something to a lost love . Maybe to change history . We went back in time , when we crossed Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin . First , the bus had to go through several angled turns through the Berlin Wall . Then , we were stopped and boarded by a man with a machine gun . He was making sure that we were tourists . We were told not to take pictures of the Berlin Wall from the East side . They didn 't want anyone to see vulnerabilities in the wall . Of course , I took pictures , but wasn 't caught . The buildings near the wall looked pretty much the same as they did after being bombed in World War II . They were shells with no windows . It was pretty strange . We were also told not to speak to anyone . We stopped at a cheesecake shop to get authentic German cheesecake . The waitress was asking us about America . Suddenly , a man in a trenchcoat showed up , and she ran away . He was KGB . The USSR embassy was across the street from the restaurant . There were symbols of the Soviet Union everywhere . Statues of Lenin were at street corners . The hammer and sickle were on buildings . As prosperous as West Berlin was , it was totally opposite in East Berlin . We didn 't see much color . It was sort of like stepping into a black and white movie . The guide made a point to tell us that an international youth convention was to take place son in East Berlin . We did get to see where the Reichstag stood and other World War II era buildings . We ended up at the Soviet War Memorial , where thousands of Russian soldiers were buried in mass graves . This was a time , when we were glad to be Americans . As we were leaving East Berlin , the guard with the machine gun came on the bus again to look for escapees , and a man moved a giant mirror under the bus to look for people hiding . They were serious . On the west side of the wall , I saw a billboard advertising Fanta . It had my last name on it . " Durst Macht Spass Mit Fanta " . I took a picture of it . That was cool . The afternoon was free to dPosted by Very early Monday morning , we got up to leave Jerusalem . It was still dark , and folks in the neighborhood were still asleep . We were flying out of Israel to go to Germany , which was our next stop on our trip , but having to get up at 3am to leave was a little unusual . The 16 tourists crammed into two taxis , along with our luggage and drove to Tel Aviv and the airport . No more being afraid . We got to the airport , but still had fear in the back of our heads . How far did their tentacles reach ? The security at the airport was impressive . Sandra gave her wooden camel to me to carry , as she had a lot of other stuff . There was an Arab businessman in front of me in the security line . He said he sold tractors and was on his way to Paris . The security people would not let him board the plane . He protested saying that his business depended on him going to Paris , but they said no . Another man had his dirty underwear inside a vase . The security people went through the underwear to look at the vase . That was kind of gross . Then , they came to me . They opened my vitamins and looked at them . They also looked at the camel . I told them that it was made of wood , but they wanted to make sure there wasn 't anything inside the camel , so they broke it in half to determine it was solid . Then , they gave it back to me in two halves . Sandra was very upset . I told her that maybe we could glue it back together , but it would never be the same . With all of the security , they never asked me about my penknife , which was quite strange . We boarded the plane for Frankfurt , and we breathed a sigh of relief with " wheels up " . We were free of Sam , Omar and Sam . It may have been something of an international incident . If anyone believes that the Agency doesn 't use ordinary people , think again . So , we headed to Frankfurt , West Germany . There was a layover there , and we had lunch at the airport - - hamburgers and cokes . At last , food that we knew . The bill was $ 15 for five hamburgers and five cokes , which was a lot back then , but it was worth it . Talula grew upPosted by We had come to Sunday in Jerusalem . Our last full day in Israel . We went to John the Baptist 's boyhood home . We then went to the Jewish side of Jerusalem to the Israeli Museum . While we were waiting outside to get in , we came upon some small children . One little boy was being picked on by the others . I really identified with him . When the kids saw us , they all wanted us to take their pictures , but the one boy stood off to the side . I went over to him and took his picture . I just wanted him to know he wasn 't alone . We then went into the museum and saw some of the Dead Sea Scrolls . We left the area and went back toward our hotel . We took a group walk to the Baptist Church to go to the service . All of us younger folks of our tour were a little wary of being on the street , so close to Sam , Omar and Sam , but thankfully we didn 't see them then . Sandra bought a solid wooden camel at the Baptist Book Store adjacent to the church . It was pretty big , at least one had to hold it in two hands . We went back to the hotel and was again confronted by the Arab boys . Prisoners once again . We were looking forward to leaving these troubles behind tomorrow , hopefully . We just didn 't want an international incident on our hands . Little did we know . . . That morning , we were pretty scared . We knew that the boys knew about us . We knew about them . We couldn 't tell Mr . Vivian , because he would have suggested we go home . So , we put on a brave face and went on the tour around Jerusalem . We went to the Dome of the Rock which smelled awful , because there were beautiful rugs inside , and everybody had to take their shoes off before going inside . You haven 't lived until you smell all those sweaty feet . We then went to the Wailing Wall . We were told not to take pictures , since it was the Jewish Sabbath . There were armed soldiers making sure . I did anyway . It was a theme that continued throughout the trip . Take pictures of things you aren 't supposed to . We went to Golgotha and the Garden Tomb . It was a very sacred place . We went to the place where the Last Supper was supposed to have been . We went inside the walled city of Jerusalem and saw many religious sites . All the while , there were two kids following our group , trying to sell us rolls of mints . Their selling technique was " 1 for a quarter or 2 for 25 cents " . They didn 't have a concept of American money . We went for the " 2 for 25 cents " . As it turned out , the Arab boys had gotten these kids to follow us around . While the boys ran their store , the kids were keeping tabs on us . When we got back to the hotel for lunch , we ran into Sam , Omar and Sam . We were told that they would not hurt us , as long as we were on tour or inside our hotel , but if we ventured out by ourselves , we will be killed . They were serious . Dead serious . Mr . Vivian wanted us to continue on our tour that afternoon back to the Old City of Jerusalem . The 4 girls and I said we weren 't feeling well and were going to stay at the hotel . So , we did . I went across the street to a drug store to get some Alka - Seltzer . The stress was making my stomach upset . I got to talking to an old Arab man and was asking him about the three boys . He told me that those boys were " crazy " , and we were to stay away from them . The old man was very wise . I got back to the hotel . ThPosted by The morning of July 13th , we boarded the bus to go sightseeing , but Mr . Vivian had an announcement to make . Because of what happened the night before , I was now the constant companion for Sandra , Talula , Judy and Sha . Where they would go , I would go too . If anyone wanted to do something , we all did it . The majority ruled . This meant that I would go shopping with the girls . No matter whether I wanted to or not . I had a " brown belt " in karate , and I carried a pen knife in my pocket . I was to be their bodyguard . So , off we went on our bus . We saw the place where the Good Samaritan was . We went to Jericho and then to Bethlehem . Nazar got us deals at an Arab shop . Bethlehem was an awe - inspiring place . We went to the Dead Sea . If you think you have experienced hot , you haven 't until you go to the Dead Sea . There was a shop that sold ice treats there . The machine broke , as it got overworked . The temperature was 127 in the shade , and it was estimated it was around 135 in the sun . I got sunburned in the bus with tinted windows . We didn 't go in the water , but I touched it , and it was hot . We also saw the caves from a distance , where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found . There were explosions nearby . We didn 't know if someone was shooting at us , but the Israelis took it in stride . We headed back to Jerusalem for dinner . As we sat down to eat in the hotel restaurant , a man came to our table and sat down . He identified himself as someone who worked at the US consulate , which was near our hotel . He was the political attache , which was another way of saying that he worked for an Agency . The Company . So , he told us that he had understood that we had befriended 3 Arab guys who ran a souvenir shop near the hotel . We didn 't know how he knew this , but he did . He said that we were not to associate with these boys . He said that Henry Kissinger was in Jerusalem to try and broker a peace , as war was eminent . The Yom Kippur war did occur in October of that year . We told the man that the boys had become our friends . He told us that the boys wePosted by We left the kibbutz and got back on the bus to continue our tour . Our tour guide was an Armenian man named Nazar . Because he was not Israeli meant that we could go to a few places in Arab areas without question . One was Samaria . Apparently some tourists could not see the well , where Jesus met the woman . We did . We had lunch in Tiberias on the edge of the Sea of Galilee . It was quite a strange restaurant . They served fish . The problem was that they caught the fish in the sea ; threw it in boiling water to kill it ; and then served it head and all . They gave you a knife and fork . You had to cut through the scales and bones to get to the meat . All with the eyes staring at you . It was like being in disecting class in Biology . In addition , the restuarant had windows that looked out over the water , and you could watch the fish being caught . The water had a gas slick on it , and folks just lost their appetites . I didn 't eat fish for years after . After an afternoon of more sightseeing , he got to Jerusalem . We checked into our hotel and had dinner . It had been a long day . After dinner , Sandra , Judy , Talula and I went walking near the hotel and came upon a souvenir store a block from the hotel . We were looking for mother of pearl things , especially Bibles . The store had a lot of those things . There were three guys who ran the store named Sam , Omar and Sam . At least , that 's what they told us . The guys were in their twenties and were smitten by the three girls . We began talking with them , and it was decided that they would take us on a walking tour around the area , after they closed their store that night . Each guy took a girl for the walk , and I was walking behind Sandra at the back . The boys had their arms around the girls , as we walked around the neighborhood . At one point , Sandra waved at me behind the boy 's back , and I got the idea that she wanted me to get lost , so they could be alone with the guys . So , I proceeded to truly get lost . I wandered through neighborhoods that made the NYC ghettos look like swanky hotels . It waPosted by July 11th was taken up with touring northern Israel . We left Tel Aviv and went by bus around the countryside . We saw a lot of Biblical sites . We ate lunch in Haifa but hadn 't quite mastered Israeli food . The guide pointed out Lebanon from a mountaintop . It looked very beautiful and peaceful . In later years , it lost its beauty and peace . We were told not to take pictures of Israeli Army camps , but I did anyway . One nice thing about our bus tour was that we were allowed to get out of the bus and walk around at the sites . One place we went to was Nazareth . The boyhood home of Jesus . The hotel had given us a fruit basket as a going away present . Outside of Nazareth , we came upon a group of children . Everywhere we went , we were hounded by children wanting money . We were told not to give money to the kids , but we decided to give the fruit basket instead . It caused a riot . The kids fought over the fruit , and we watched from inside the bus as the dust rose around the kids . One boy was so proud that he came up with the peel from a grapefruit , as the insides had been obliterated in the fight . We saw how little these kids had , and how grateful we should be as Americans . It was only fruit to us , but it meant the world to them . We continued on and ended up at a kibbutz called Nof Ginosar . That 's where we spent the night . It was a beautiful oasis . They had candy with a liquid center of brandy . Brandy candy was a big hit that night with the younger set . We tried to get Mr . Vivian to eat some , but either he knew what they were or else he didn 't want candy . Too bad . It would have been fun to see him with a buzz . He had an infectious laugh . Tomorrow would be the beginning of a new chapter of the tour that was dangerous . The next morning , we were scheduled to leave at 10am for the airport for a flight to Tel Aviv . All the rooms were supposed to called by the hotel to get them up and ready for the day . We started assembling in the lobby of the hotel with our luggage to board the bus . Mr . Vivian noticed that Sandra and Talula were missing . He had me call their room , and I woke up Sandra who answered the phone . They never got the call . They rushed to get dressed and ran to meet the bus getting there right at 10 . Sandra said that , as they passed by the bellhop from last night , as well as the desk clerk , they both smiled , as if they were getting the girls back from the incident with the bellhop . The girls were mad , but we were just glad to leave that hotel . We got to the airport and were rather frightened by seeing men with machine guns walking around the airport . It was the first time of us seeing this kind of security at an airport . We boarded the plane and flew to Tel Aviv . We flew across the Meditarranean Sea . It was long but beautiful . Upon arriving at Tel Aviv , some of the group referred to it as " Tel A Viva " . We were looking forward to spending some time in Israel and be able to see things at a more casual pace . We checked into the Pan American Hotel on the coast of the Meditarranean . I saw some of the Watergate Hearings in the States on the TV in the hotel . That night , the girls hung out in the bar of the hotel . Judy befriended the bartender . I went out on the beach and put my toes in the Sea . Judy and the bartender walked along the beach , more or less . It was a time of winding down from the stress of leaving Rome . Little did we know what was about to come our way in the coming days . This day , we toured Rome . It was a day packed with a lot of old stuff . We went to Vatican City and saw the Sistine Chapel . We were warned not to take pictures inside , but of course of our group did . I thought she was going to be arrested , but she said it was an accident , so she was forgiven . We didn 't see the Pope . We went to Trevi Fountain and tossed coins which symbolized coming back at some point . We drove by the Colisseum but didn 't stop . By the time lunch arrived , the group split up to find places to eat . I went with Sandra , Talula , Judy and Sha to an Italian restaurant . We had wine with our food . It was the first time I had ever drunk wine and got a little buzz . The main problem was that our breath smelled like wine , and Mr . Vivian disapproved of anyone drinking alcohol , so we tried our best to avoid him . I 'm not sure he ever found out , but I think he did . Kids will be kids . That afternoon , we did more sightseeing like The Forum . The big thing about Rome is that everything is old . That night as I was fixing to go to bed , the phone rang . It was Sandra . She told me that I needed to get to their room , because she was afraid they were going to die . I knew there was a problem , because she never talked about death . I went down the hall and found she and Talula terribly afraid . What happened was that there was a push - button system to summon a bellhop , maid or concierge . They thought they had pressed the button for a maid to bring more towels , but instead it the bellhop button . When the knock came on the door , they said " Come in " and were undressed . The bellhop got a surprise , as did they . They screamed and shut the door in his face . They were afraid he was going to do something to them , so they wanted me to protect them . While I was in the room , we made a plan to get him back . I was to go in the bathroom and wait , as they called him back to their room to apologize . He was going to get the idea that they were going to party with him . At that point , I would come out of the bathroom to say hello and scare him off . ThPosted by July 8th meant we were flying from London to Rome . The bus ride to the airport was bittersweet . We were moving on to the next city , but we were leaving London . Upon boarding the British Airways plane , there was an alarming discovery . They had seats that faced each other , much like a train . Everyone that could got the seats that faced the front . Unfortunately , I got one that faced the tail . That was strike one . After we took off , strike two occurred when they served ham that didn 't look too good . Then came strike three . We hit an air pocket that caused the plane to drop 8000 feet in three seconds . At least , it seemed that way . I began hyperventilating . My group noticed that all the blood had drained from my face , and I my skin was ashen . I was cold , and my heart was racing . They called over a stewardess . Then came a steward . They laid me on the seat and took my blood pressure . Apparently , it was pretty high . Then came the oxygen . Then came some pills . I have no idea what all they gave me , but I was still not doing well . Then they had me breathe into a paper bag to try and control my breathing . That helped a little , but I was still in trouble . There was a nurse on board who tried to help . As they worked on me and put more pills into me , a little British lady a couple of rows back said , " Give him some hot tea " . They did , and my color came back . My breathing got better . My blood pressure went to normal . I was okay . By the time we landed in Rome , the pills took effect , and I was flying on the ground . The folks in the tour kept asking me how I was . I was great ! I could feel my body floating along the sidewalk . It was quite a sensation . Upon arriving at the Imperiale Hotel , we found ourselves just around the corner from the Spanish Steps . We were warned that guys would tend to pinch the women 's bottoms . I went with the girls over to the steps , and the previous warning came true . It is a wonder how some women are able to sit down later . The hotel was built on different levels . On our floor , there were steps in between roPosted by July 7th brought the much anticipated tour of London . I asked the tour guide to take us by the Ministry of Defence and Savile Row . I could see the place where James Bond worked , and the place where The Beatles had their offices . They were gracious to do that . We also got to see The Tower of London , the Crown Jewels , Westminister Abbey , Big Ben , Trafalgar Square , Buckingham Palace , and the Changing of the Guard , among other things . We took a lot of pictures at the Old Curiosity Shoppe . That afternoon was supposed to be for rest , but who could rest ? Some of us wanted to go to the British Museum , so we took the tube from our hotel there . The problem was that we got there 30 minutes before it was closing , so we only got to see a couple of things . It was hard to remember to look right and then left before crossing the street without being hit . One of our tour members , Mrs . Sitton , dropped her camera in the street . She thought she had broken it . She ended up buying slides and postcards to make up for the broken camera . She didn 't find out until getting home that her camera didn 't break after all . That night , we went to the theatre to see " The Mousetrap " by Agatha Christie . I guess it was good . I slept through most of it . I still had not mastered jet lag . I wish we could have stayed longer in London . After all , they spoke English , or at least some did . We were quite surprised how many foreigners made up the people there , but it was a good start to what would be an adventure . So as the plane was winging its way toward London , most folks were sleeping , or trying to . It was hard to sleep with the excitement of what was to come . As I looked out the window of the plane , I saw the green of Ireland . Our body clock might have been 2am , but it was around 7am in London . The plane started its descent , and we were going through the typical pea soup fog . You couldn 't see a thing . Hopefully , the pilot could . We landed at Heathrow Airport . The same airport that The Beatles had landed years before to screaming fans . We were there , but no one was screaming . Everyone was too tired to scream . After a long wait , we got a bus to take us to our hotel in London . The hotel was the Mount Royal near Hyde Park . It was in a great location , although the hotel itself was not four - star . It kind of reminded us of one from World War II that had not quite been remodeled . Everyone paired off for their rooms . Sandra and Talula , Judy and Sha , and others . I was with Mr . Vivian , since we were the only males . I thought I knew him , but I found he had a real phobia of germs , and he washed his hands constantly . He suggested we take naps , due to the jet lag , but I wanted to go out . I wanted to get something to eat , so I went into a restaurant near the hotel and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich . They didn 't know what that was . I tried to explain to toast bread with cheese in between . They tried to do it , but it ended up more like a quiche . We had a communication problem . That would not be the only time . After leaving there , I thought I would try out my British accent that I had developed during a play a few months back . Things were going pretty well . Then a man came up to me . It was obvious he was an American like me . He asked me where the US Embassy was . Of course , I didn 't know . I had landed just a few hours before . So , I told him in my British accent where to go - - down three blocks and take a left . He asked me if I was an American . I told him no , but I had spent some time there , but was born in Kent . He bought it . I realizedPosted by It was July 5 , 1973 . The day our trip to Europe began . There was 16 people in our tour group . Mr . Vivian was the tour leader . He was my speech and drama teacher from Anderson College , which is where the tour originated . Back in the Spring , he announced that he was going to lead a tour to Europe and the Middle East . It seemed like a perfect thing to do . After all , my friends Sandra and Talula wanted to go . We were all very close . My parents thought it was a good idea , since their big motto was " travel broadens one " . They also recognized the need to be with friends . And , I felt a special closeness to Sandra . There were two other girls in the group - - Judy and Sha . Judy was my age , and Sha was still in high school . The others in the group were school teachers or retired women . I was the only guy in the group , besides Mr . Vivian . We met up at Greenville Airport . Sandra 's boyfriend Jim brought her . It was not pleasant . My parents brought me . We had a group photo ; said our goodbyes ; and boarded the plane . I had flown before , but others hadn 't . Three weeks later , we would all be veteran flyers . The first flight was a short one from Greenville to Charlotte . After a brief layover , we flew from Charlotte to New York , landing at JFK . I had never been in an airport that big before . I saw a man selling pencils in the terminal . We had about three hours before we were to board the plane to London . Of course , everyone split up . When the time came to board around 7pm , Sandra and Talula were not there . Mr . Vivian was panicking . I found them , and we ran to the plane . It wouldn 't be the last time . We flew via Pan Am toward London . They gave us flight bags as a bonus . We got the music headphones . The music was David Bowie 's " Space Oddity " , which was very appropriate . " Ground control to Major Tom , Ground control to Major Tom , Countdown engines on . . . May God 's love be with you . " Also on the music was New York City 's " I 'm Doing Fine Now " . They did some good programming . The plane lifted off . It got dark in a hurry , as we headed toward EnglPosted by In the spirit of understatement , we live in a great country . We have a lot of freedoms that others only dream about . Is there any wonder why so many folks from other countries want to come here ? Most do it legally . They contribute to our society , and make this country a better place . Then there are those that come illegally . But , they come . On the eve of my 35th anniversary celebration of my trip to Europe , I wanted to impart some wisdom that I learned in relation to this day . Before we left to go to Europe , they told us to keep our passports close to us , because people would try and steal them . That was some very good advice . I had a jacket with me that I could keep my passport close in the lining . Someone would have to rip my jacket off to get to it . In many countries , the folks welcomed Americans , mainly because of their money . In some areas , the folks were a little standoffish to Americans . Perhaps they forgot that we liberated them in World War II , but I am not going to name names . Although I will tell more in the coming days , the general feel after three weeks away was how glad we were to be home . We missed family and friends , but we also realized how good we had it here . While you are drinking and eating today , and then drinking some more , and then maybe eating a bit more , and then watching the fireworks tonight , just think for a second how your country made it to this point . Despite all of our faults , we are still here . Thanks to Tom , Ben , John , George , Betsy , Paul , and all of the rest who got us here . And thank God . We are about to start a retrospective adventure in a couple of days . It is the 35th anniversary of my trip to Europe . I will do a day by day remembrance of what happened each day on my trip . It will not be a travelogue , but rather a collection of stories about a group of people on a journey . It is a journey to find oneself , as well as a lot of experiences . If you find some of these stories as being hard to believe , then okay , but it will all be true . 35 years has been a long time . A lot has changed , but there are some themes that are still relevant . So , I hope you will read them and be entertained , as well as being thought provoking . As for today , 35 years ago on July 3rd , my mother and I went to see the James Bond film " Live and Let Die " . We usually went to the James Bond movies . She introduced me to the series , and I fell in love with them . We both liked this one . After all , it was filmed in New Orleans . It was the first one with Roger Moore . We were both partial to Sean Connery but thought Roger did well . Two days later , I was to fly to London where James Bond lived . Also The Beatles . My mother introduced me to their music in 1964 . She was a very hip person . We went to see " Live and Let Die " at the Dutch Square Theatre which stood in the parking lot at the back of the mall . Not where it is now . Anticipation was building with my trip looming . Daddy had been to Europe and had told me some things to expect . The group had met to be told what to expect and what not to do . We listened . Little did we know how important that meeting was , and how much we probably had needed to listen more closely . So , in the coming days , just know that I am not making this stuff up . Enjoy . I had a treat last night by going to see Boz Scaggs at the Peace Center in Greenville . It was a great show . But , let me go back a little first . I heard of him back in the early 1970 's from my friend Sonny Smith . Sonny was very big into music . He introduced me to the music of a lot of artists , such as CSN , Todd Rundgren , and Carole King . He told me to check out Boz Scaggs , specifically the album " Moments " . I did , and it was wonderful . A blend of rock , blues and jazz . When I moved to Fort Worth and working in the music dept . at Sanger Harris , " Silk Degrees " came out . It was one of the biggest selling albums in the 1970 's . Hits like " Lowdown " and " Lido Shuffle " were all over the radio . My personal favorite was " What Can I Say ? " . It was also the time that I was in love with Kare . It was a good time . When I heard he was coming to Greenville , it was a given that I was going to the show . Yesterday , I went to the box office to get a ticket . The girl at the ticket window was not to clear as to who Boz Scaggs was . She thought he was related to Ricky Skaggs . Last night , I went to the show . Most of the audience there were in the 50 's and 60 's . It was really a retro audience . The show started 30 minutes late , due to a medical emergency in the audience . Apparently , a woman fell in the balcony . Some folks in the audience got a little rowdy waiting for the show to start by trying to encourage them to come out by clapping and hollering . I think that might have been the result of selling liquor at the show . I have never been a fan of selling liquor at concerts . Once Boz Scaggs and his band came out , the audience erupted in applause . He started with " Lowdown " , and it got better with each song . The music was a little blues , some jazz , and a lot of jamming . One of the big highlights for me was the appearance of Greg Phillinganes on keyboards . He has played keyboards for Eric Clapton for a lot of years , and I have him on video . He is a musical genius . It was a great show . I had wanted to get an autograph after the show , so I went to tPosted by When I grew up in a Baptist minister 's home , I was taught early on to care about others . Not just caring about their souls , but also about their emotional side . Growing up , I was like a sponge . I absorbed everything , which made me what I am today . A caring soul . As I was being abused by my peers in junior high and high school , I formed a group called " The Walter Durst Society for Human Rights " . It was a small group , but we did actually have members . It was a group focused on the needs for people to be treated equally . I also was very concerned about pollution and the need for social change . When I went to college , it became the " United Society " , which just happened to have the same initials as the " United States " . It was more focused on the political and social climate in the country . I worked hard to have a stream cleaned up in downtown Anderson SC . It was near children and pets , and was quite toxic . When I went to seminary , I saw first - hand about the abuse of women at the hands of men . I got involved in women 's rights . When I moved back to Columbia , I lived with my parents and saw the need of the rights for seniors . I also got involved in the United Way , because they provided Meals on Wheels . My parents would have starved without it . I also saw the need for children 's rights through my writing and performing puppet shows for inner - city kids in Philadelphia PA and Smyrna TN . The common thread throughout all of these social issues is that no one has the right to abuse another , and everyone has rights . It all goes back to caring . Sometimes I think I care too much at the expense of my own needs . That is probably right . And I think that sometimes my friends get a little sick at my concern for their needs . There are even some people who misinterpret my concerns . I learn lessons every day about the need to care . One day , I was in downtown Columbia and saw a homeless man looking for money in pay phones . Two well - dressed men walked by him . One yelled out to the homeless man , " Get a job " . They laughed and walked away . ThPosted by |
I can just hear you years from now . Mommy , didn 't I ever smile ? Why do I always look mad in all my pictures ? The short answer is yes , you did smile , just not on camera . In general , Ella , you are very smiley . You smile huge , wide smiles all the time . You are a bit more reserved in front of the camera , but more likely to let us capture those sideways grins . Anna , you are much more shy and particular with smiles . Especially first thing in the morning , you smile too . But it usually takes more work to get a big grin out of you . And you tend to flash little smiles quickly . And both of you like to stare very solemnly into the camera . The little black box comes out and you start looking very seriously at it , no matter what antics Daddy and I are trying behind the camera . So , it is a wonderful feat when we get a picture with both of you smiling . … a crazy stroke of luck . This problem might be overcome if we bought a camera where the time between depressing the button and the picture being taken is less than 3 seconds . Although that sounds like a very short period of time , when you are trying to get two infants to sit still , it is interminable . Below , our first mistake was trying to take these pictures just before bed . You weren 't in the best of moods already . Our second mistake was putting you in a hot outfit when you were already pretty warm . Third was trying to make you sit up on your own , which you can 't quite do yet . We should have propped you on something , but we were trying to get the pics before you totally exploded . Our fourth mistake is deciding half way through to move the blanket in the background , thus making photoshopping a smiling head from another picture almost impossible . Ella : " Wait , I 'm falling . Oh , thanks Daddy . " Anna : " Aww man , you weren 't coming to get me out of here . " Ella : " Ok , I am so over this , let 's blow raspberries . . " Anna : " Yeah , are we done yet ? " Ella : " I am not going to smile anymore , so you should just pack it up . " Anna : " I am telling you people , I don 't want to do this anymore . " Ella : " Come on Anna , check out Daddy . " Ella : " Hey , Anna , this isn 't so bad . " Anna : " Now she 's falling on me ! Do you see this ? " Anna : " WAAAAAAA " I forgot to mention in Part 1 that Uncle Craig had shown up in the triage room shortly after Grandpa and JeJe . He said he just couldn 't get any work done and was so excited he had to come wait , even though he might not get to see you for a while . Then when they told us the c - section time was so close , he was really glad he had come . So , even before you were here , he was pretty crazy about you ! He called Auntie Sharon and she arrived shortly before the allotted time . The little triage room we were in was too small for everyone , so everyone but Grammy moved out into the waiting room . All of the sudden it was time to go to the operating room . Daddy and I were walked down the hallway and as we passed a door , there was a younger guy with scrubs and a mask on . They said there was a change of plan and he would be our anesthesiologist . The nurse assured me this was a good thing . He looked really young and for a minute I was slightly alarmed and then I thought about how Uncle Mikey looks young but is a really good pilot and decided this guy could be the same . We walked past a bench where they told Daddy he had to wait . I walked into the OR where people were laying out instruments and prepping the room . I began to get nervous remembering they said I might have a general if my scoliosis was too bad to do a spinal . They had me step up on a stool onto the table . The anesthesiologist had me lean forward and looked at my back and said he could do a spinal . Then I got really nervous . He numbed my skin and I started to sweat . I was really wishing Daddy could be there to hold my hand . I remember the spinal hurting a good bit , but only for a minute or so . I tried to hold really still while he put it in and before I knew it , it was in and I was laid back and I started going numb . They had me scoot onto the bed / table before I went completely numb . The dr put a nasal cannula in my nose . It made me very uncomfortable . I don 't breathe very well through my nose and this was like trying to drink from a fire hose . The air was very str Daddy had stood up to see you and he was very excited . I was waiting to hear you cry and as soon as you did , it was the most beautiful sound in the world and it made me cry . Daddy watched as they fished around for " Baby B " . Ella , later I found out that after your sister was born , the doctor reached in and grabbed one foot . But he couldn 't grab the other foot , you kept pulling it away from him . Eventually he had to flip you around and fish you out head first because you weren 't cooperating . It 's like after your sister left , you all of the sudden had lots of room and decided you weren 't ready to leave yet ! That 's why Anna was born at 12 : 42 and Ella at 12 : 44 , because Ella tried to escape ! They flashed you over the curtain quickly too and then I could hear you really screaming as they worked to clean you up . As soon as you were both out , the anesthesiologist said Daddy could either stay with me or go over to see you . I didn 't hesitate , I told him " Go ! " . I wanted him to make sure you were ok and stay with you guys . This is the first picture Daddy took when he got over to you guys . I think this is Anna getting cleaned up . It 's easier to tell who is whom when you get your arm bracelets . About that time , I started to feel really bad . I was moaning and feeling like I was going to pass out . I got all clammy and felt short of breath . At some point they had removed the oxygen mask and I was sure I was passing out any second now . I told the anesthesiologist and he assured me it felt like I couldn 't breathe , but that my values were just fine . He even showed me on the monitor that my pulse ox was 92 . But , the anesthesia had deadened my diaphragm and my body was just sure it was suffocating . I felt ENORMOUS pressure on my chest . Like they were squeezing my heart from the bottom up and it would explode . I was moaning and just couldn 't stop . It was so uncomfortable . I remember listening to what was going on with you guys while trying not to feel like I was dying . I heard them say how much you weighed . I didn 't hear your lengths until later . I heard a nurse ask your names and I heard daddy say Anna Evelyn and Ella Ruth . I was so glad . After you were born , there was lots more pressure and pulling and jostling that I could feel and pretty soon , without Daddy or babies to distract me , I started feeling sick . I ended up throwing up several times and feeling pretty crummy . I remember they brought you to see me Ella . But I was so sick that I could see the anesthesiologist wave the nurse back while he held my emesis bag . It seemed like there was lots of commotion and at times I could hear you cry , but I was feeling so short of breath and such ridiculous pressure all I could do was groan . In the mean time , they were taking your temperature , putting on your arm and leg bracelets , taking your footprints and cleaning you up . Then they swaddled you guys up . This is Ella very mad about having been removed from her nice warm home . You can see why we gave you the nickname " Little Bird " in the hospital . You made little " eep " sounds that reminded me of a bird , and when you cried and your stretched your head up on your little neck , it reminded me of a baby bird . Eventually , I started to feel a little better and they brought both of you over to see e . You were all bundled up with hats on your heads and you looked so precious and snugg y . I noticed that Anna was much paler than Ella and they told me that you had swallowed some amniotic fluid on your way out , but that you were just fi e . We took a quick picture and Daddy and I remarked on how cute you both were and then the three of you guys headed down to the nursery and I was alone aga n . Mommy meeting Ella for the first ti e . Daddy took our first group pho o . Notice Anna on the left is much paler than Ella . People say I need to write out my birth story before I forget it . I may have already forgotten parts since you were born 3 weeks ago and I haven 't gotten a lot of sleep since then . But , here goes . We have to start a little before the day you were born . At the beginning of my pregnancy , before I even knew you were twins , we knew my due date was May 21 , 2012 . Then when we found out you were twins , the doctor said you would probably be about 3 weeks early , so we went with May 1 as the due date . After a month or two of that , all of the sudden , he said you would probably be about 4 weeks early . We were surprised , but started thinking and telling people your due date would be April 21 . I mean , wouldn 't you think looking at these that you were squished enough to warrant early release ? Kate is on the right and that is Pippa on the left with her own leg folded in front of her . There is some debate if that is actually your leg or your sister 's , but that is what the ultrasound tech told us . Daddy kept wondering if you would hold out until May to be born . He even asked the doctor , who gave him a funny look and then explained that this conversation probably wasn 't even necessary because you would probably be early , but that we would cross that bridge when we came to it . So , I got very used to the idea that you would be here on or before April 21 . And if you weren 't , it wouldn 't be long before they would just do a c - section and get you out . Luckily , you guys seemed perfectly contented floating in your amniotic fluid and growing and feeding on the inside . I showed no signs of early labor , no cervix dilation , no discharge or any reason to think that you would be making an early appearance . So , when we went to the 35 week appointment on Thursday the 19th of April , I expected to discuss scheduling a c - section rather quickly . Daddy and I were both shocked when the doctor said that the hospital didn 't let them schedule a c - section until 38 weeks , so we scheduled it for MAY 8 . THREE WEEKS AWAY ! ! ! ! Daddy and I later discussed that actLate that afternoon I drove home . Daddy was tired from working outdoors and he suggested we lay down to take a nap around 5pm . Well , I laid down with him and he went to sleep immediately , snoring up a storm , but I couldn 't fall asleep . I was just uncomfortable , so I got up and did a load of laundry and puttered around the house . I soon began to realize that my belly was getting very taut and uncomfortable and I wondered if I was having contractions . I immediately went in to the bedroom to tell Daddy . But , he was so tired from painting and working , he was in a coma . I shook him and said I was pretty sure I was having contractions . I expected him to start and get all freaked out . Instead , he rolled over and said " brain fog . " I was surprised and tried again to wake him with no avail . So , I called Aunt Jody and Uncle Mikey on Skype . I was having pretty rhythmic discomfort and tightness . I wasn 't sure if these were Braxton - Hicks or the real thing , but I told them and we all wondered if this could be the start of labor . I downloaded a contraction timing app for my phone and timed them for about 20 minutes . I was just too keyed up to sit and time them for too long . I called Grammy . She didn 't think this was actually labor . I was talking to her on the phone and she didn 't think I would be able to talk through them if it was truly labor . I tried to wake Daddy again and decided it was so good that he could sleep . If it wasn 't labor , then I wasn 't wasting his time on a false alarm . If it was , he was going to need this rest because he wouldn 't be getting any more for a while . So , I cleaned a little around the house and then settled on the couch to try to rest . I fell asleep for no more than 30 minutes and woke up uncomfortable and feeling a little heavy , the way I do when my blood pressure is high . So , I got up around 2 : 30 and took my blood pressure . It was 158 / 100 . I began to worry that I was developing pre - eclampsia and was going to have an early c - section after all . I alternated between puttering around the house , finishinI am about to take a shot of the most bitter medication you will ever taste in your life . It 's something Pops gives all his patients and it is supposed to keep you from throwing up during surgery . . . . . . well , it didn 't work for me . Minutes before you were delivered ! Doesn 't Daddy look funny ? There are three main reactions you get when you tell someone you are having twins . Some people get REALLY excited . They gush and say congratulations over and over and ask if there are twins in your family and talk about what a blessing twins are . Then there are the folks that seem horrified . They gasp in shock and stare at you as if wondering why you aren 't freaking out more . They say things like " What are you going to do ? " , " Better you than me " or even " Good luck with that . " Then there are the folks that seem much more interested in how you came to be than in the fact you are coming . Fertility drugs have certainly increased the number of twins that are around . But , most IVF twins are fraternal twins . Fraternal twins occur in nature when the woman ovulates more than one egg at a time and both eggs are fertilized at the same time . Fraternal twins are just as likely to look alike as any two siblings are , they are just carried at the same time . IVF involves implanting already fertilized eggs into the uterus . Because it is expensive and doesn 't have a horribly high rate of success , frequently more than one fertilized egg will be implanted at once . Many times only one egg makes it into a viable pregnancy , but other times , two or more eggs survive and twins , or even higher order multiples occur . Identical twins occur when one egg is fertilized , and then at some point after fertilization , the zygote splits into two embryos . Identical twins occur in about 2 - 3 % of pregnancies and account for about 30 % of all twins . Although identical twins can happen with IVF , it is about the same rate as occurs in non - fertility assisted pregnancies . Identical twins don 't run in families . No one knows what causes the egg to split , it is just the luck of the draw . But , the average person doesn 't know this and so I patiently explain that while there are two sets of fraternal twins in my dad 's cousins , there aren 't any identical twins that we know of in my family . But , identicals don 't run in families and this was jPosted by Ok girls , up until now , I have been writing about stuff in a linear sequence , but I have to break in today . Today I am 31 weeks and 4 days pregnant . And I look and feel every single day of it . Please don 't misunderstand me . I feel blessed that you are both growing , and are healthy . I thank my lucky stars that I haven 't had a lot of problems carrying you and I hope sincerely that I can carry you all the way to " twin full - term " , but I just have to say , that I am getting really tired of being pregnant . Not the carrying you part of pregnancy , just the condition in and of itself . There are women who say that they never have felt better than when they are pregnant . That they are born to do this . They glow and say how wonderful they have felt through their pregnancy and they frankly , make me want to vomit a little bit . Or slap them . Or just call shenanigans . I think it must be some type of lie they perpetuate to make sure we suckers will join them in Mommy - hood . My good friend Michelle describes pregnancy this way : " For 30 years , your body has been all about you . Keeping you alive and doing what is best for you . Then when you get pregnant it is like your body turns on you . All of the sudden , things that have worked one way forever , all of the sudden are different . You are no longer priority number one . If the baby needs hormones , it is really irrelevant that those hormones are poisoning you . The baby gets the hormones and you feel sick . " That Michelle is one smart cookie . And what can you expect ? She is a rocket scientist after all . Now , I heard her say these things , but until you live them , you just can 't understand how TRUE they are . Feeling bloated , crampy , nauseous and bone tried during the first ( and for me second trimester ) was not fun . But , it was disconcerting too . All my life , when I felt nauseous , the remedy was usually to throw up . If it was something that I ate that made me sick , getting rid of it usually at least helped if not alleviated the issue . But in pregnancy , this is no longer true . I fPosted by We were both relieved the 12 week ultrasound date had finally arrived . Glenn had spent his sleepless nights researching the 12 week nuchal translucency test and knew precisely what was going to happen . I had researched it , but not nearly as in - depth as he had . The ultrasound appointment was first . I wasn 't feeling great , but I was very ready to see you guys and make sure all was well . I knew I had probably lost weight rather than gained and I worried about your development . Plus , I had read about vanishing twin syndrome and I wasn 't sure what was worse , one baby that had it 's twin disappear , or two babies stuck in the same sack . We went into the ultrasound room and I lay down on the table . The tech pulled out the wand and squirted jelly on my tummy ( which was nice and warm ) and got the machine all ready . She put the wand on my belly and then she pulled the wand away and said something like " are we looking for more than one baby ? " Glenn said " There 's two ? " I swatted at Glenn and said " Yes , it is twins . " , so relieved that there were still two babies . She looked back at our chart and got very flustered . I imagine she has probably accidentally told a couple or two that they were having twins and obviously , she didn 't want to be the one to break that news . But , she was also upset as the appointment had not been made for twins , so we hadn 't scheduled enough time to scan both babies adequately . She went into a set - up screen and changed the number of fetus option from 1 to 2 and we were off ! They refer to the baby closest to the cervix ( or presenting baby ) , as Baby A . We looked at Baby A first , checking the fluid on the back of the neck ( the nuchal translucency ) and it was well within the range so as not to indicate Down 's syndrome . We heard your little heart beating , saw you batting your arms and kicking your legs . Saw the fingers on one hand . The little zipper - like spine was easy to spot and at one point , you flipped all the way over . I thought the technician had flipped the picture somehow , but she said " No , that baby just turned over . " Glenn and I held hands , and he kept asking if I could feel you moving . I couldn 't . It amazed me how much you were moving and I felt nothing . In the background behind you , we caught glimpses of Baby B . Then , we switched over to Baby B and did all the measurements and checks again . Again , good heart rate , and the nuchal translucency was good . We were relieved to find out you were both healthy , but we really wanted to know about the membrane . Had she seen it ? We couldn 't see it at all , but Glenn asked just as we were wrapping up and the tech said that yes , she had seen a hair like membrane between you . We walked out of that room on cloud 9 . Now you look much more like a real baby . Although I can 't remember which one this was . What a bad mommy I am . Glenn was very animated and excited as we moved to the doctor 's office and awaited a visit from the doctor . I was very happy , but I was also feeling very crummy . When the doctor walked in to me sitting over the trash can , he said , " Well , this won 't do . " Thankfully he prescribed me two drugs to help manage the nausea . He confirmed that everything had looked good at the ultrasound and that we were in fact having mono - chorionic / di - amniotic twins ! Praise the Lord ! Glenn and I headed to Chick - Fil - A again after the appointment , but I couldn 't eat much of it . I was anxious to go fill my prescription and try these anti - nausea drugs . And we were both anxious to tell people . We had been keeping this secret ( although I think most of my co - workers had figured out that me looking like death and puking in the bathroom meant I was pregnant ) and it was so fun to be able to tell people . For your grandmother , it seems that being sworn to secrecy was the hardest part . She had been waiting so long to be a grandma that she just was fit to burst . She insisted that on our way back from Bertram we stop in Georgetown and tell my grandparents . She HAD to have someone to talk to about this . I couldn 't leave her all week with my Dad back in Lubbock and no one to talk to about it . So , although we were both exhausted , we headed to Grandma & Grandpa 's house to share the news . My Mom met us there . I guess she couldn 't wait to see the looks on their faces . We came in and G & G were settled in their den for the evening , Grandpa in his chair , Grandma on the couch . I told them we had some news and told them we were expecting in May . They seemed very happy , but not really overly excited . I mean , they already had quite a few great - grandchildren by this point . But , when I said it was twins , they got pretty excited . We briefly mentioned the mo - mo possibility , but breezed right over it . We asked them to pray for the babies to be healthy and every time I saw them after that , they told us they prayed for the twins each night before bed . I am sure they asked for more details from my mom later that week , but I imagine she glossed over it just as my dad had done with her . It really was too awful to think about for long . And there were lots of other folk that prayed for you too . My Mom told a missionary couple they have known for years that we needed prayers and they prayed for you . You were unspoken prayer requests at church until the news came out . Little did you know it , but we prayed that darn little membrane into being . Glenn and I really were on pins and needles waiting for that 12 week ultrasound that would reveal our fate . Glenn would say " It just can 't be mo / mo . The odds are so slim for a mo / mo pregnancy . " We were very hopeful , but the stories we had read online gave both of us nightmares . Glenn didn 't sleep at all at night It might have kept me up at night too , except that I was so darn tired I would faPosted by The next day there was a UT football game on TV , so we headed out to Craig 's to watch the game . He had Matt and Casey ( Glenn and Craig 's friends who had four year old fraternal boy / girl twins ) were at the game . Ben and Connie , their twins who inspired Glenn to hope for twins before we even met were also there . I tried valiantly to watch the game , but was so exhausted I fell asleep . I didn 't think this was ALL that telling , since Casey took the twins up to watch a movie when they got bored and fell asleep herself . And I knew she wasn 't pregnant , but apparently it set off some warning bells . Later in the day , Casey asked Glenn if he was getting a baby for his birthday . He elegantly side - stepped this issue by saying no . After all , he was getting TWO babies ! After the game , when it was just Glenn , Craig and me , Glenn pulled out a gift for Craig . He had discussed different methods of telling his brother and eventually decided to utilize those onesies I had gotten him . He was giving Craig two of his shirts that were slightly too small . Rolled up inside each shirt was a onesie . The plan was that Craig would open the first , we would say " Surprise , we are pregnant ! " and get all the excitement out , then he would open the second , find another onesie and we could say " Surprise ! It 's twins ! " Glenn had asked me why I deviated from the plan to give my parents time to digest the one fact before springing the other . I told him that I just panicked when my Mom cried . He admitted that her reaction surprised him too , but that my immediate revelation hadn 't helped the situation , but it was already done . So , we resolved to do it right with Craig . He opened the first shirt and exclaimed how much he liked it as the onesie rolled onto the floor . He looked down at it , and promptly ignored it and took to admiring the shirt . Neither Glenn nor I knew how to respond to this . This was not how this was supposed to play out . We just kind of sat there in shock as Craig proceeded to pull out the other shirt and admire it . He scooped up the onesies and put them in his lap and set about totally ignoring them . Glenn finally said something to him about well , did you see what else was in there . Craig finally acknowledged the white rolls and with some prompting opened the first one . He didn 't seem horribly shocked or surprised . And of course , he asked immediately if there were two since there were two onesies . We were batting zero for 2 on letting the idea sink in . Oh well ! Craig said later that when he first saw the rolled up onesie , he thought Glenn had given him tighty whities and didn 't want to open them . What a goof . He seemed genuinely pleased about the idea of twin nieces or nephews . We talked for a while about it all and showed him the ultrasound pics . He told us he was happy forPosted by I thought and thought about how to tell my parents . I knew my mother would be ecstatic . She has wanted grandchildren for years . I heard her lament to someone at my wedding shower that she didn 't understand how all her sisters , who were YOUNGER than her ALL had grandchildren and she had none . I also knew that it was possible that this would elicit a very emotional response from them , especially my dad , who is a very tender - hearted guy . I had seen a silver fortune cookie in a catalog somewhere . It was to give as a gift with money , or a cute " fortune " in it . I got online and found one and bought it . I then typed up a fortune which read : " You will soon be grandparents . " Then below it , " Lucky Numbers : 05 - 21 - 2012 . " I thought that was a cute way of telling them without blurting it out . Glenn and I discussed that we would let the pregnancy news sink in before we sprung twins on them . We would try not to overwhelm them all at once with the news . So , all week I stewed and couldn 't WAIT to tell them . I talked to my Mom several times on the phone and had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out the news . That Friday , I prepared the fortune cookie and put it in a gift bag . I drove to the restaurant with my heart banging and my stomach fluttery . We all arrived at just about the same time and we had decided to present the gift outside in the parking lot so that whatever emotional response there was , we could have a little privacy . It wasn 't ideal , but it was how it was going to be . I hugged them both hello and handed my Mom the gift bag . She looked surprised , but opened it up . She gave the fortune cookie a strange look , but the tail end of the fortune was sticking out , so she pulled it out . It was at this point that my heart sunk . I had miscalculated a bit . My Mom needs reading glasses nowadays . In my zeal to make it look like a fortune cookie , I had tried to duplicate actual fortune cookies , right down to the font size . She held the paper out at arm 's length and squinted to read it in the gloom . For a miWe tried to lessen the mo - mo blow when telling my parents . And I had a hunch that my Dad , being an anesthesiologist , would know JUST what it meant , but was wise enough to keep that to himself . My Dad is a pretty smart guy in most cases and I think he does a lot of trying to manage overly - excited patients and reassure them , so he knows how to soften a hit . Later I learned that my Mom went right home and googled it . In fact , she said she asked Dad on the way home in the car and he was vague and somewhat non - committal . She said after she looked it up she woke him up and was like , " you said this wasn 't that bad . I Googled it , it 's really bad . " It was a risk we knew we were taking in telling them , but we needed their prayers and support . And if , God forbid , that next ultrasound had shown no dividing membrane , it wouldn 't have been nice to spring that on them and let them be all excited only to dash their hopes later on . But , I figure that your grandmother prayed you guys into existence . I mean , you are probably twins because God got tired of listening to the same thing over and over again and wanted to make double sure that prayer got answered . I am joking . In all honesty , if there is a problem you are having , you couldn 't have a better ally praying for you than your grandmother . Back out in the parking lot after dinner , Mom got teary - eyed again and told me to take care of myself and how happy she was again . Then she leveled a look at Glenn , one of the stern , serious ones and said " You take care of her . " Glenn told me later that if anything happened to the three of us , my mother would probably kill him . I said " No . You have attained golden son - in - law status by providing grandchildren . " Glenn replied , " No , she was dead serious . If anything happens to you three , I am in BIG trouble . " There might be a grain of truth to that . * Girls , you should ask your grandmother ( as of the writing of this , she hasn 't decided what she wants you to call her ) to show you the fortune cookie . It lived on the mantle for months afterward and I think it might have migrated into the keepsake curio by their bedroom door . She showed it to every family member and friend that came around . I would bet dollars to donuts she will have it still and know right where it is . On the drive back to work , I had a TERRIBLE realization . I have a very good friend , let 's call her Z , who likes things JUST the way she likes them . She has for years talked about wanting twin boys . Z had mentioned to her OB that she wanted twins and her OB had sat her down and basically read her the riot act on how twins were NOT going to happen for her and she just needed to get over that idea now and get used to the fact that she might have ONE baby . Z was somewhat hurt by this , but I think it was a good wake up call for her . And it probably didn 't hurt that right around this time , a good friend of hers had twin boys . I remember Z calling me to her cube and showing me a registry with 2 carseats , 2 cribs , 2 of just about everything and saying incredulously , " Do you KNOW how expensive twins are ? I mean , two of all of this stuff . My gosh ! " I think watching her friend go through a twin pregnancy and visiting her during the first couple of weeks after birth , it made Z a little more willing to give up the twin plan . However , I was very worried that she would be hurt to find out that I was having twins . I mean , I remember when I was single and friends would tell me they were pregnant , I was always happy for them . But it also felt like the universe nudging me . You don 't have much more time , better get on it . And without being married , or even having a boyfriend most of these times , it just felt like everyone was getting what they wanted but me . Like everyone was passing me by . And it was NOT for lack of trying or wanting it on my part . It was just that Glenn hadn 't shown up yet . So , the thought of telling Z worried me a lot . That day at my desk , I Googled monoamniotic twins . Know this : if you have some health issue that you are wondering about , Google is a very bad idea . You could have a hang nail and come away thinking that you were dying of gangrene . Google is not conducive to calm and anti - inflammatory health results . I found that mo - mo ( the short hand for monochorionic - monoamniotic ) twins is a very highPosted by Over the next weeks , I mentioned the impending baby , the pregnancy and talked about things quite a bit . Glenn listened and always replied in a very non - committal way . After several days , it did begin to hurt my feelings , but I tried to understand from his point of view . Women get all ooey - gooey about babies and men start thinking of all their responsibilities . Our finiancial situation , while not bad , always worried him . He wanted more in savings , less debt . He wanted to be out of our neighborhood and move to a better part of town . He stayed up with insomnia quite a bit normally , and I noted that he seemed to have even more than usual lately . He was very stressed out at work and I knew that this news probably only added to that . He seemed disappointed we had to wait so long to go to the doctor too , but he didn 't say much . But I didn 't realize how bothered he really was until the morning of that first doctor 's appointment . As we were getting ready I told him I was going to be so relieved that we would get reassurance that everything was fine . That weekend I had experienced a touch of morning sickness , but nothing severe at all . In a perverse way , it felt good to have more outward signs of a healthy pregnancy . I told him I was excited to go to this appointment and he stunned me when he said " I am terrified . " I asked him what he was terrified of and he started talking about what if there were problems , what if the baby wasn 't right ? I answered him calmly that everything would be fine . I reminded him that we had talked about what would happen at this appointment . I had done more research and was reasonably sure that we would have a dating ultrasound as well as a pap smear . I had also read ( thank goodness ) that the ultrasound was NOT done with the familiar belly jelly and sensor rubbed on your belly , but with a wand affectionately referred to online as a " dildo - cam . " That produced a more accurate picture and it was what was used this early in a pregnancy . I was very thankful I had read this and a week eAt the doctor , everything went fine . I peed in the cup , they took my weight and vitals . The ultrasound machine was in the room and while we were waiting on the doctor , I took the time to point out the offending transducer to Glenn . He grimaced and looked away quickly . The doctor came in and asked all the questions . When was my last period ? Yes , that would put me at May 21 as the due date . He did the pap - smear and the breast exam and Glenn sat dutifully in the chair and didn 't run for the waiting room . And then , when satisfied that all seemed fine , he said " Let 's take a look . " And pulled the ultrasound machine closer . He told Glenn to get up and stand on my left side by my head . Luckily the transducer part happened under a sheet and then immediately there was a staticky picture to distract us . Immediately the doctor said " Well , that 's interesting . " I held my breath . Was that good or bad ? " Do you see what I see ? " he said in a sing - song type of voice . I squinted at the machine , but honestly , it was one big mess and I couldn 't see a thing . I wanted to say , " I don 't see squat but static , what do you see ? " " I see two little flutters . " he continued , in the sing - song voice . It took me a second to figure out what he meant . Flutters ? " Are you joking ? " I asked . But right then , I could see the mouse pointer aimed at a little rhythmic beating on the screen . The doctor said " No , see , two little hearts . " and moved the mouse pointer to a second little rhythmic pulsating . I immediately looked up at Glenn . His mouth was agape . I am not sure if he cottoned onto the doctor 's meaning later than me , or if it just took him a second longer to respond . Glenn very eloquently said " What ? " and the doctor obligingly said " It 's twins ! " I stared at Glenn . My first thought was " HOW did he KNOW ? " His words from that morning echoed in my head . What on earth was happening ? And I promptly burst into tears . Part of it was the immense relief of seeing a live baby on the screen . I had worried about ectopic pregnancies and false positives and miscarriages for the last three weeks , despite my brave face to Glenn . But another part of me was entirely overwhelmed . The thought of twins hadn 't even occurred to me and it was almost too much to take in . Glenn said something about " Don 't fall off the table . " And the doctor asked if I was ok . I nodded and tried to pay attention to what we were seeing on the screen . You can see on the right that there is a baby with little arms and legs sprouting . The other , you can only really see the top of the head ( or butt ) . I could see that one blob did look like the pictures and illustrations I had seen of a fetus at this age . But the other , just looked like a round blob with no arms or legs . I worried and finally asked . We were told that the second wasn 't facing the same way . We were either seeing the top of its head , or its butt . He clicked away and measured the hearts and eventually said that the dating looked right on and everything was good . During all of this , Glenn wonderingly said to me , " Well , at least we didn 't use all the onsies in that three - pack . " Yes , thank God for small favors . Then , the doctor put the wand away , sat me up and proceeded to tell us that this changed things . First , twins would be expected a little earlier . He said 3 weeks early , which put us at roughly May 1 . Then he said that he thought they were monochorionic twins . I confess , that meant nothing to me , but he wrote the word a slip of paper with the words " one Posted by I headed off to work , where I think I got absolutely nothing done all day . I re - ran through our conversation , through the last week , when I had been expecting a period that wasn 't coming . And then , a couple of things started to hit me . The 10th anniversary of 911 had been the weekend before . We watched a bunch of stories about the survivors , the victims on the planes , the rescue workers , the building of the memorial . We watched the plane collide with the building over and over , the towers burning , one by one the towers falling . We watched the surveillance footage of the plane hitting the pentagon , the footage of the huge burn spot outside Shanksville , PA . We watched hours of footage where thousands of people died . Where children talked about losing their fathers and it was all heart - wrenching . I was moved to the point of tears , but never cried . UNTIL : A freaking Budweiser commercial of all things . They showed a commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdale team is harnessed up . The team is trotting across green grass . Then you see the New York skyline behind them and they stop . There is the gaping hole where the towers once stood . The horses all lean their heads down and bow . And I balled . I cried and cried . Glenn looked at me like I was crazy . But darn it , it just made me so sad . And frequently in my life , animals have been able to move me in a way that humans just can 't . But looking back , I think I can honestly say , that was the first in many silly , hormonal reactions to things . It should have been my first sign . Well , that and waking up in the middle of the night to eat . I have never done this . Perhaps half a dozen times in my whole life have I woken in the night to get up and eat . I remember doing it as a child occasionally , when I was going through a growth spurt . But as an adult , almost never . All of the sudden , I would wake up and my stomach would hurt I was so hungry . After I realized I was pregnant , I would follow my stomach 's lead more readily . And in that first trimester , I rarely missed a night of mPosted by Well , this blog has been dormant for too long . At first I stayed away because there wasn 't much to say that COULD be said . There was a huge elephant in the room I wasn 't allowed to mention . But now , pretty much everyone who reads this blog ( and I don 't think there are really any that do that I don 't know in person ) already have been introduced to said elephant . I am pregnant . Full stop . With twins . I have to tell you how much I loved seeing people 's faces when I first broke the news . The shock , excitement and occasionally unadulterated horror were quite enjoyable . Then , I went through quite a bout of morning sickness . Like 20 weeks worth of it ! And we are working frantically to replace all the carpeting in our house with vinyl laminate . So , I have been busy . I have been trying to keep a journal for the twins . But honestly , I am much more likely to type out a couple of paragraphs than I am to actually hand write them . I know , what is this world coming to ? If it 's TMI for you , skip it . But , someday maybe the twins can look back on it and see how it happened as I remember it now and not the little I remember after raising twins through the newborn stage , infancy , toddler - hood , childhood , teenage years , etc . Cuz I am pretty sure after all of that , my brain might not remember these details so well . So , here is how it all started : Glenn and I talked about having children before we got married . We both wanted to when the time was right . We got married and it seemed like time FLEW . We talked about it and it seemed like we weren 't ready financially , or emotionally and although we knew we would never truly be ready , we put it off . We did stop using bc , but we weren 't trying at all . No charting or tracking or planning . So fast - forward to mid - September 2011 . I had cramps and tender breasts for several days and was awaiting my period . No thought in my head at all that we might be pregnant . I went about my business for a week and then , one Monday morning , it occurred to me that by my calculations LAST week should have been the week , not this week . I took a pregnancy test , thinking nothing of it . I 'd had a couple of false starts before and usually I got a negative test and a period within 24 hours of each other . I was not concerned . I got up , peed on the stick and saw the line turn pink before I could put the stick down . I thought nothing of this . That control line shows up on every test . I walked out of the bathroom , leaving the stick to marinate and fed the dogs , folded some laundry and acted entirely too casual . I walked through the bathroom to the master closet with laundry to put away and I stopped in my tracks . Were there TWO lines on that stick ? ! ? Surely not . I calmly walked in and hung up the clothes , not believing my eyes . I walked into the bathroom and picked up the stick and collapsed onto the toilet . Good thing I close the lid every time . My head was reeling . I stared at two little lines on the stick . Like a pause sign . And had I looked closer earlier , I would have realized the line that IMMEDIATELY appeared was not the control line , but the pregnancy line . And it was very dark . There was no mistaking the answer . Could this possibly be right ? I grabbed the calendar and began trying to figure out the timing of the last month . Well , I guess it could be right . My husband lay snoring in the bed just feet away , oblivious to the drama tMe : " Yes , really . " Me : " Yes , it 's a positive test . " Thinking that he didn 't understand , I got up and got the test and handed it to him . Glenn : staring at test with mouth slightly agape " Really ? " [ incredulously ] Me : Just stare at him wondering if he has been robbed of all speech but the word really . Glenn : " Really " [ with a sigh at the beginning . More of a statement of fact than a question . ] Me : tears welling in my eyes . I am not sure if he is mad or upset or excited or surprised or shocked or just still asleep . " I know it wasn 't nice to tell you when you just woke up but I didn 't want to wait until tonight and I wanted you to know as soon as possible … . " Then he held out his arms and we hugged for a couple of minutes . He was very quiet and didn 't say a whole lot . I told him I was surprised and he asked why . After all , we weren 't using birth control , what did I think was going to happen . And I answered the honest truth . Nothing . I thought nothing would happen . I was sure we would have trouble and I wasn 't expecting this at all . He looked at me like I was crazy and very shortly after that headed off to get ready for work . I took a shower and thought about what precisely I had expected from him . I mean , I guess I hadn 't expected him to jump out of bed and dance the jig in joy . And I had woken him out of a sound sleep to tell him in nine months he would be a daddy . I guess that was probably the best I could have hoped for . He didn 't lecture me that we weren 't ready to start a family yet . And if he had , boy I would have had something to say about it taking two . But , really , he is a quiet , low - drama guy . This was his way of dealing with big news . I got dressed and took him a mug of coffee before leaving for work . We talked a couple of minutes , both of us somewhat reserved . Then we both headed off to work . |
Dusty 's hand stopped stroking Zak 's back . Zak looked up into Dusty 's eyes . He had a faraway look . Zak was suddenly scared that he had overstepped . He pushed himself up into a seated position . " Dusty , I 'm sorry , I was just curious . If you don 't want to talk about it you don 't have to . " Dusty pulled Zak back to him so that Zak was snuggled up against his side . " It 's alright , Zak . You can ask me anything . Like I said this scar is a souvenir from a time in my life I 'm not very proud of . It 's a reminder for me . It 's not easy to talk about , but I want to you to know . I 'm just afraid that once you hear about my past , you won 't think this , whatever this is , is worth pursuing . " Zak was shocked . He had never seen Dusty be anything but confident and self - assured . What could be so bad that he would think that Zak wouldn 't want a relationship with him ? Zak straightened himself up and turned to look into Dusty 's eyes . The pain , confusion and doubt he saw there broke his heart . He leaned forward and kissed Dusty on the cheek , and then he moved up and kissed his forehead . Finally , he kissed Dusty on the lips . Not a kiss of passion or desire , but a kiss of love . Zak pulled back and put his hands on Dusty 's face and looked him in the eyes again . " Dusty , you listen to me . When I first saw you I started to fall for you . You were and are the most beautiful person I have ever seen . " He stroked Dusty 's cheek . " Your handsome face . " He moved to trace along Dusty 's brow . " Your beautiful eyes . " He moved a finger along Dusty 's lips . " Your incredible smile . " He ran his fingers through Dusty 's hair . " And the long hair is a definite plus too . " He moved his hands along Dusty 's chest stopping again at the scar . " And the hot body doesn 't hurt . " Dusty grinned at Zak . " But none of this would matter if you weren 't the most compassionate , loving , amazing person . When I first saw you , I thought you were the most beautiful person I had ever seen . I was wrong ; you are the most beautiful person I have ever MET , inside and out . You have made me feel so good these past two days , better than I have felt in so long . You 've given me confidence , you 've listened to me , you 've talked to me , and you 've helped me . You 've made me feel loved and wanted . I 'm not talking about the physical or romantic . You made me feel like you wanted to spend time with me , you 've been my friend and I hope we are on our way to being more , but you will always be my friend . NOTHING you can tell me will ever change that . " A single tear ran down Dusty 's cheek . He leaned forward and took Zak 's face in his hands . He kissed him . " Thank you , Zak . I feel like you are the one piece that I 've been missing and I couldn 't bear to lose your friendship . " Dusty smiled at Zak . " Ok , but before I tell you about the scar , I need to tell you about my dad . " He leaned back against the tree and pulled Zak to him . Zak nestled himself in the crook of Dusty 's arm . " My dad was my hero . He was so much fun . It was just him , me and Mom . He would take me to baseball games , carnivals , whatever he thought I might enjoy . He spent so much time with me . I was never one of those kids that were made to feel like a burden ; I knew I was loved and I loved him so much in return . " " My parents loved to garden . It was something they had always done . They would spend every Saturday morning working out behind our house . There was a store called The Gardening Center . If one or both of my parents were turned loose in there , they were lost for hours . They 'd find new plants , new flowers , new planters and statues to put in the garden . It was their ' thing ' to do together . " " I was seven . It was a gorgeous sunny spring Saturday . My mom was , of course , in the garden . My dad had run to The Gardening Center to pick up some new rose bushes as a surprise for my mom . I was in the family room watching cartoons . I was not as big a fan of the whole gardening thing as they were . " " The doorbell rang . I knew my mom wouldn 't hear it , so I went to answer it . I figured it was my dad , because he was always forgetting his door keys . " " I opened the door and there on the other side of the screen door were two policemen . They asked for my mom . I left them standing there and went out to the backyard to yell for my mom . I told her about the police and she figured they were there to collect for some charity or something . I remember following her back into the house . She was covered with soil , sweaty , her hair pulled back in a ponytail . There was a leaf caught in her hair back near where it was tied . It 's funny the things I can remember from that day . But , I can 't remember what the police said . I just remember them coming in and talking to my mom and her collapsing into a chair and sobbing . I went to her and she grabbed me in the tightest hug . I actually couldn 't breathe . It was scary ; I didn 't know why she was so upset . I was actually mad at the cops because they were making her so upset . Finally , I went into the kitchen and called my mom 's best friend , Jackie . It was the only phone number I knew besides my own . I told her the police were at the house and they were making my mom cry . She dropped everything and came right over . " " When Jackie got there , my mom was distraught . The cops explained everything to her and then they left . Jackie suggested I go up to my room and play so she could help my mom . " " What I found out later was there had been a robbery attempt at The Gardening Center . Apparently , some guy looking to score money for drugs . He had a gun . There was a little boy , probably about my age , maybe a little younger . The kid was crying and screaming . He was scared . The thief got angry and frustrated with the kid and apparently moved to hit him with his gun . My dad stepped forward to stop him from hitting the kid . The guy turned the gun on my dad and shot him . He ran out of the store and just left my dad lying there . By the time the paramedics came it was too late for him . " As he tried to continue , Dusty began to sob uncontrollably . Zak stroked his back and just held him . Tears were falling from Zak 's eyes as well . Zak reached up and wiped a tear from Dusty 's eye . " Shh , it 's ok . You don 't have to go on if it 's too hard . I understand . " Dusty leaned back and closed his eyes . He took several deep breaths . He leaned forward so his and Zak 's foreheads were touching . " Thank you , " he said , trying to keep his emotions under control . Zak just reached up and rubbed his shoulders . After a few minutes , Dusty sat back under the tree and pulled Zak back into his former position resting against Dusty . He continued , " I don 't remember much about the days after that . I remember my mom finally telling me my dad was gone . I remember my Gram and Grampa coming . I remember bits and pieces of the service and everyone being so sad . But mostly , I just remember that all of the sudden , my dad , my hero was not there anymore . " " The first few months were really hard . I was so angry . I lashed out at everyone - - my mom , my teachers , kids that had been my friends . I couldn 't control this rage that filled me . My mom tried to send me to a therapist and I basically told him to fuck off . I was lost . " " I continued to get worse . I started hanging out with the worst bullies the school had . These were my ' friends ' . We picked on smaller kids . We broke peoples ' windows . We were just rotten . I don 't know why I kept doing these things ; it wasn 't making me feel any better . I was just trying to make everyone feel as bad as me . " " Over the next couple of years , I was in and out of serious trouble . I spent a couple nights in juvenile lock - up . I was arrested multiple times . My mom was just getting more and more frustrated . My Gram came and tried to straighten me out - - we had always been close . My Grampa had passed soon after my dad . I missed him , too , but not like I missed my dad . Gram talked to me , yelled at me , everything she could think of and it did no good . She told me that no matter how bad I tried to be she would never stop loving me , but at that moment she didn 't like me very much . It didn 't matter to me . A part of me had died when my dad died , the part that loved and was happy . All that was left was the shell filled with anger and rage . " " I started doing drugs to deaden the pain . I didn 't get into anything really hardcore , but by the time I was eleven I was smoking pot pretty much every day . I would steal pills and sneak drinks . I was stoned or drunk most of the time . " " Finally , everything came to a head one day after school . I had been buying pot from an older kid at the high school . His name was Jack . I owed him money . I was supposed to bring it over to the high school , but I was too baked to remember it . I remembered when Jack and his goon Vinnie showed up to meet me after school . I didn 't have the money . So , Jack and Vinnie decided to make an ' example ' of me . Vinnie held me while Jack worked me over . He blackened my eye , cracked a rib and kicked me so hard in the nuts I puked on him . That just made him angrier . I didn 't see the knife . I was too out of it at this point . I just remember a searing pain in my stomach and then Vinnie let me go and I fell to the ground . My eye was almost swollen shut . My ribs were crying out . I couldn 't catch my breath . I reached down to try to feel around my stomach where the pain was incredible . I felt something sticky and when I pulled back my hand I saw the blood . I must have passed out at this point , because the next thing I remember was waking up in a bed in the hospital . " " My mom was sitting by my bed . Apparently , I had been out of it for almost a day . I had been found by a teacher who called 911 . They operated on me . The knife nicked my intestine and I had lost a lot of blood . I guess they had told my mom I had a 50 / 50 chance . I spent about a week in the hospital . The police wanted to know what had happened . I told them I was mugged and didn 't know who did it . " " I was scared . Jack almost killed me just because I owed him money . What would he do to me if I ratted him out ? Plus , the cops already thought it had something to do with drugs . When they ran blood tests at the hospital they found the drugs in my system , but since I was underage and the victim they couldn 't do anything about it . Luckily , I wasn 't holding when I got jumped . " " Honestly , no . Zak , I didn 't care . I was only thinking of me and surviving . This should have been a warning to me , but I was too far gone . My mom saw that and she had finally had enough . She was talking to a friend about me . I found out later she was thinking about a ' Scared Straight ' program or even military school . But this friend knew Mr . Jones and asked him about me working at the ranch after school and on weekends . " When my mom told me , I flipped . I didn 't want to work on some dirty farm . I didn 't want to be around animals or anything like that . I just wanted to be left alone . My mom gave me no choice , I was going . " " The first few months , I think Mr . Jones regretted taking me on . I was still too angry and being forced into this was just making it worse . Then Mr . Jones bought the mustang mare , Phoenix 's mama . She was angry too . We were two peas in a pod . She lashed out at everyone . Always making a ruckus in her stall . No one wanted to deal with her , just like me . One day I was cleaning stalls in the area of the barn where she was ; she was making her usual noise , kicking the stall door and generally making a nuisance of herself . I went over to her and started talking to her , telling her she was going to hurt herself if she didn 't stop . She stopped and looked at me and a bolt went through me . She craned her neck over the stall door and I started to pet her and kept talking to her . I was basically telling her all the stuff that people had spent the last few years telling me . I immediately felt this connection with her . Mr . Jones came around to see what all the noise was about and found me just standing there stroking her and talking to her . I think he was just as shocked at that sight as we both were when we saw you with Onyx yesterday . " " Something in my connection with the mare started to melt the cold exterior I had spent four years building around myself . Mr . Jones put me in charge of taking care of her , since she seemed to be as attached to me as I was to her . I started learning how to ride and spending more and more time out here . As the mare got closer to giving birth , I was getting so excited . Mr . Jones had told me that after she gave birth and the foal was weaned , he would have someone help me train her and she would be ' my ' horse . " Dusty started to tear up again . " You know how that ended up . The mare died giving birth to Phoenix and he became mine . I have shared the same connection with him since the day he was born . He has always been mine . I may not own him , right now , but there is no question in anyone 's mind who he belongs to . " " So once I started to connect to things here , things became better all over . My mom and my Gram both noticed the changes in me . I was more open , I loved and laughed again . I felt like my old self . It 's like for four years there was another person in my body . It wasn 't me . My mom was so happy with all the changes that I made in my life and my change in attitude that for my twelfth birthday she gave me Herc . It was like he was my lifeline at home and Phoenix is my lifeline here . Anytime I start to feel the anger build or take over again I just spend time with one of them and the love and happiness come back in . " Zak sat there in silence still snuggled up against Dusty . Dusty was scared about his silence ; maybe knowing about his past was too much for Zak . Maybe finding out all the terrible things he had done would end them before they began . As if sensing Dusty 's trepidation , Zak wrapped his arms around Dusty 's torso and hugged him . Zak pushed himself up and took Dusty 's face in his hands once more . Dusty looked up into Zak 's eyes ; tears were flowing from them . Zak leaned forward and kissed Dusty . " I 'm sorry , " he stammered . " I knew it . I don 't blame you ; why would you want to be with me after everything I 've done ? " Dusty started to stand up , but Zak laid all his weight on him to keep him down . " No , I 'm sorry that you had to go through all that , " Zak cried . " I never knew my dad ; he died when I was barely three . My only memory of him is of my mom holding me at his funeral and seeing him in his casket and thinking he was asleep . And that is less a memory and more a feeling ; like I know I was there , but I can never focus on it . I 've spent my whole life wondering how things would have been different for me if I had had my dad . Maybe I would have had brothers or sisters . Maybe I would have more courage . Who knows ? I don 't think I miss my dad , because I never really knew him . I miss the thought of my dad and what might have been . But for you , to have known your dad and had him be such an important part of your life and then to lose him , that 's a whole different situation . I can 't say I wouldn 't have gone off the rails either . You were a kid trying to deal with something no kid should have to . The important part is you came through it and now you are this amazing , compassionate , loving person . I am so lucky to have found you . " Dusty looked up to see the tears in Zak 's eyes . He took Zak 's hand from his cheek and brought it to his lips and kissed the palm . Then he leaned forward and kissed Zak . " Not as lucky as I am , " he said , tears rolling down his face . They embraced each other and relaxed under their tree . Occasionally one would hug or kiss the other . But each was happy just to feel the closeness of the other . At one point , Dusty went to say something to Zak and realized that Zak had fallen asleep , his head resting on Dusty 's chest . As Dusty watched him sleep , he thought about how incredible the last two days had been . He really did feel that Zak was the last part that was missing from his heart . He had the ranch , he had Phoenix and Herc and now he had the boy of his dreams to share it all with . He knew that Zak was more fragile than he let on , but he was also stronger than he thought . He felt a great relief that he had shared his past with Zak . Zak knew all about the past that shamed him and he still cared , he still wanted to be with him . Dusty looked at his watch and realized they had spent way more time at the lake then he had planned . He gently shook Zak awake . Zak turned to look at him bleary - eyed . Zak yawned . " Ok . " Zak stood and stretched . Dusty reached out and tickled his sides while he was stretching . Zak giggled and slapped Dusty 's hands away . " Hey ! ! No tickling ! ! Got it ? " He waved his fist in Dusty 's face . Zak put his hands over his ears . " Hey ! ! Warn a guy before you do that . I think I may have lost some hearing in my ear . " " Oh , please . " Dusty rolled his eyes as they heard the sound of hooves coming at them . They looked up and saw Phoenix and Bob running towards them . Zak pulled on his jeans ; luckily his speedo had dried , because in all his planning for this afternoon he had forgotten to bring a clean , dry pair of underwear . And he wasn 't a huge fan of free balling . He quickly gathered up the towels , their t - shirts , his helmet and Dusty 's saddlebags . When he turned around Dusty was standing next to Phoenix , while Bob stood there grazing . " Does that answer your question ? " Dusty asked grinning at Zak . " I 'll be right beside you the whole time , you 'll be fine . " Zak handed Dusty his saddlebags and towel , which Dusty threw over Bob 's back . He then handed Dusty his t - shirt which Dusty pulled on while Zak did the same with his . Zak also put the helmet back on . Zak threw his towel over Phoenix 's back . Dusty reached up and spread the towel over Phoenix 's back since he was still damp from his swim . The two boys both kissed at the horses and started down the trail at a leisurely walk . They rode in silence . Occasionally , one would reach over and grab the other 's hand . They kept looking at each other and exchanging shy glances and grins . About halfway home , Dusty looked at Zak and then moved his eyes up the trail , grinning at Zak . Zak nodded and gathered up his reins . Without a word between them both boys kicked their horses into a canter and raced down the trail . Dusty steered Bob alongside Phoenix . He looked at Zak and grinned . " What are you doing ? " Zak asked as Dusty moved quickly from Bob 's back to Phoenix 's where he pulled himself up tight against Zak . Dusty reached around and unbuckled the helmet that Zak was wearing . He took it off Zak 's head . " That 's better , " he said as he leaned into kiss Zak 's neck . " Don 't worry , " Dusty said as he straightened up . " We 're all good . Now where was I ? " he asked as he went back to nuzzling on Zak 's neck . Zak leaned back so that every possible inch of his back was touching Dusty . Dusty moved forward and ground his crotch into Zak 's ass . Dusty reached his hands under Zak 's t - shirt and caressed Zak 's chest . He stopped to tweak his nipple and moved his hands to Zak 's shoulders where he started to massage the muscles . He leaned down and nibbled on Zak 's earlobe . Zak groaned . " Keep your eyes on the trail , " Dusty whispered in his ear . Zak reached his hands back and found the bulge in Dusty 's swim suit . He gently squeezed . " Oh , God , Zak , " Dusty groaned . " Don 't do that . " The boys spent the rest of the ride enjoying their closeness . Too soon they were back at the ranch . As they came off the trail , Dusty noticed Mr . Jones ' truck was not there . Dusty grabbed Zak from behind as he was trying to scrape water off Bob 's belly . " I didn 't ask if you had money , I asked if you wanted to go . I have money . Plus , Mr . Jones will probably want me to put some of the stuff on the ranch account since you will need it for work . " He knew that Onyx was his responsibility so when he finished in Barn 2 he ran over to the main barn . He went into Onyx 's stall and Onyx was standing in the paddock looking over the back door of the stall . " Hey , Buddy , did you think I forgot about you ? " he asked the big horse as he reached up to scratch his neck . " Why don 't you wait there so I can go get your dinner ? " Zack quickly grabbed the water bucket , walked across the hall and filled it . He lugged it back over and hung it in place . He then ran to the feed room and got Onyx 's allotment of grain and feed . After dumping that in the feed tray , he went back and grabbed the two flakes of hay for the big horse . Once he had everything in place , he went back to the paddock door and opened it . Onyx lumbered in and headed over to his feed tray . Zak went over to stand by him for a few minutes . He stroked Onyx 's neck and talked to him while he ate . He ran through the main barn and found that Dusty was not there . He must have finished and moved onto Barn 3 . He ran over to Barn 3 . He checked a couple of stalls and it didn 't look like anyone had been fed yet . He wondered where Dusty was . He must have gotten tied up somewhere , he thought . He decided to go ahead and do the feedings in here so they could get going . Meanwhile , Dusty was in the yard talking on his cell phone . Mr . Jones had called him just as he was finishing in the main barn and he got a better signal in the yard . He spoke briefly to Mr . Jones and was just hanging up when he heard Zak call for him . " What ? ! ? " Dusty exclaimed . He ran into the barn with Zak hot on his heels . When he got to Beauty 's stall he saw the horse lying on her side . " Damn ! ! She 's having the foal . " Authors deserve your feedback . It 's the only payment they get . If you go to the top of the page you will find the author 's name . Click that and you can email the author easily . Please take a few moments , if you liked the story , to say so . [ For those who use webmail , or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead : Please right click the author 's name . A menu will open in which you can copy the email address to paste into your webmail system ( Hotmail , Gmail , Yahoo etc ) . Each browser is subtly different , each Webmail system is different , or we 'd give fuller instructions here . We trust you to know how to use your own system . If the email address pastes with % 40 in the middle , replace that with an @ sign . ] Top of page | Site Copyright © 1997 - 2017 IOMfAtS . 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This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive . I have not tried any of these , but there are a lot of ideas here , and they look good . At the very least you will be inspired . Last night on the train I had fun teasing The Man about his way of offering me choices . " I like the way you include me in all our decisions , " I told him . " You always ask me first before doing something . " " Oh yes it is , " I said . " ' Are you cold ? ' you ask , when you come into the room . ' Do you want the heater on ? ' And when I say no , I 'm fine , you tell me it 's very cold and turn it on anyway . " " Oh yes , you do , " I said . " What about when you wanted an extra blanket on the bed . ' Do you want another blanket ? ' you asked . ' I 'm fine ' , I said , and you put another one on anyway . " " Yes , I know . You do everything for me , " I said . " The other day , when we 'd been walking a lot and wanted to stop somewhere for coffee , you asked me which coffee shop I wanted to go to . I said the one we were passing looked fine to me , and you said it didn 't look very good , and why didn 't we try the other one up the street a bit . So we did . " The jazz concert was great . It was also very , very long . It was held at the NHK concert hall in Osaka , started at five , and finished shortly before nine . By the time we got home it was nearly ten , and we hadn 't eaten . There are no restaurants open around the NHK concert hall on a Sunday night . The hall was packed . I don 't know how many people it holds , but I heard someone mention two thousand and something . A lot of people . There were something like 40 musicians taking part in the concert , which was not a retirement concert as I 'd thought ( i . e . he 's not retiring ) , but a 50th anniversary concert . That 's fifty years of performing - the pianist , Zensho , is 70 . He 'd collected many of the musicians he 's played with through the years , and probably about a third of them were similarly aged . They were wonderful . Zensho was on the stage the whole time , looking about 55 , which he does close up , too ( does jazz keep you young ? ) and he was superb . ' Play ' is exactly the right verb for what he does with a piano . Today The Man and I went shopping at Uniqlo , a large discount clothing store which has opened a branch near here . Well , quite near . ( It was a longer cycle than we 'd anticipated . ) We bought a few things for winter - polo neck tops , a couple of jerseys ( sweaters , for Americans ) , and so on . It was all very cheap and the quality is good . While we were there I was trying on a jersey and looked in a mirror . The lighting was good . Too good , in fact , and I got a nasty shock . " God , I look horrible , " I said to The Man . " Old and tired and worn out , like I 'm sick or something . " The Man looked at me . " Don 't worry , " he said , cheerfully . " You always look tired . It 's the shape of your eyes . " Later we cycled to another place , quite a long way off in the other direction , and splashed out on a new top futon . It was on sale , but still quite expensive . Our old one is ratty . The feathers have gone all flat and it 's not warm any more . It 's very old . When we got home The Man and I had a wee fight while we were struggling to get the futon into its cover . According to The Man I was doing it all wrong . According to me I was doing exactly the right thing and it was the stupid cover 's fault , not mine . Why are those things so bloody difficult ? Why don 't they make it easier ? Can 't they make them so the covers open all down one side , instead of having to thread this great ballooning feathery thing through a small hole ? It 's silly . The new futon feels great and the expense was worth it . I tested it . I would have stayed there , testing it some more , but I have to do the washing and then prepare some lessons for next week . We 're going to a jazz concert tomorrow . The pianist is an old guy who is retiring , and this is his last concert . He 's very good . And it 's a good thing The Man remembered , because I 'd forgotten all about it . Imagine being able to see with your tongue , or with your ears . This NY Times article describes how a new device , the BrainPort , is making it possible for blind people to regain some vision . The BrainPort also makes all kinds of other things possible , and it 's very , very weird to think about . To the ESL teachers who come here looking for ways to teach the simple present tense , I apologize . I 'd be annoyed too , if I wanted to filch a lesson plan of the Internet ( I do it all the time ) and instead got me rabbitting on irrelevantly about something quite different . Yes , I have noticed your searches , and feel guilty every time one pops up . I recommend that you go here instead , at least for a start . Also , you need to narrow your search . Using Google , include ESL " lesson plan " " present simple " ( include the quotes ) in your search , and you 'll narrow it down a bit . When I have time to figure out how to make a sidebar with some useful links , I 'll do it . That way when you turn up here , instead of just getting frustrated and cranky you 'll have somewhere useful to go next . I have dozens of teaching links bookmarked . I just don 't have time right now to check them out and make sure they 're still there , and then figure out how to make the sidebar . But I will . Promise . And sorry for wasting your time . I know how busy you are . I 've been using Bloglines for a while now , and as anyone who uses it will know it gives you suggestions for blogs you might be interested in . You get a message that says : " Based on your current subscriptions , Bloglines has generated this list of feeds that you might be interested in . This list is updated daily . " Sometimes the list contains some very interesting blogs , and this is a good thing if I have time to read them and a bad thing if I don 't , because I add them to my feeds and end up with a huge backlog of unread but probably fascinating blogs . But recently something a little disturbing has started happening . It has started recommending my own blog to me . It has become quite pushy about it , moving me right to the top of the recommended list . I 'm not sure whether to be flattered or alarmed . Does this mean I only read and write about the things that interest me ? It makes me feel terribly narrow - minded , but on the other hand , well , should I read and write about things that don 't interest me ? And what is my blog about , anyway , that would make it so fascinating to me ? Even I 'm not sure , and I write it . I can 't think what gave Bloglines the idea I 'd be interested in reading such nonsense . After we 'd finished laughing at his hair I asked him if the driving test was hard . " Oh , no , " he said . " You just had to give a pint of blood . " We thought about it . It made sense , in a mad sort of way . Get your licence , have an accident , and be refilled with your own blood . I asked what it was like , living there . " Oh , it was great ! " he said , enthusiastically . " Wonderful entertainment , you know . You get invited out to public beheadings every Friday night . " He also said that you could fill your car for about ten cents , but unfortunately water was more like ten dollars a gallon . And whisky was about one hundred dollars a bottle . One day , he said , when a certain embassy was having a piano delivered , the crate bounced a bit too much on the docks as it was being unloaded and started to leak whisky , almost causing a Diplomatic Incident . After working there for three years he 'd saved enough to go back to England and buy a house , but he said he wouldn 't do it again . The principal of the school where he worked is still there , though . Funny how every Thursday evening I learn a little more about my colleagues . We work together every week but barely have time to talk . An hour or two over curry , though , and little surprises keep popping up . I 've worked with this guy for seven or eight years and never knew he 'd lived in Saudi Arabia . Today as I was cycling to work ( very carefully , see my last blog entry ) a woman shot out of a side road without looking either way to see if anybody was coming , and I braked sharply and swerved to avoid her . She didn 't see me . She cycled on obliviously , and I followed more slowly , wondering how on earth anybody in Japan makes it to adulthood . She had a baby on the front of her bicycle and a toddler on the back , and had sped straight through a stop sign out into a fairly busy street . Eventually she turned into another busy street , also without looking first , and narrowly missed a garbage truck that was coming the other way . A bit later there was another incident when an older woman cycling towards me , slowly and carefully , got a big surprise . A crow , which had been sitting on a fence facing me but not visible to her , suddenly flew out and passed right in front of her face . She swerved and shouted , then stopped and stood there for a moment , breathing heavily and looking shocked . It must have been scary - this huge black thing swooped right in front of her face so close she must have felt the wind from its wings . The crow landed in a tree and looked smug . I think it did it on purpose . From now on I 'll be watching out for stupid cyclists , stupid drivers , and crows . I think I also need some protective demons , like the ones pictured below . These are the demons guarding the gates of Shi - Tennoji , where I went on Sunday . I want protective demons that look like that . I decided to go out and do a little grocery shopping just now , on my bicycle ( with the wonderful baskets ) . It is a beautiful autumn day . I stopped at an intersection and looked to see if anyone was coming . Someone was . Two someones , in fact . They had the stop sign , not me ( although I stopped anyway , because often cars don 't stop there ) - but they ignored it . These two kids on bicycles , going as fast as they could , came zooming down the road , straight through the stop sign , and zoomed into the road I was in . One of them rode full speed into the back wheel of my bicycle . Crash ! He flew off his bike and it skidded across the road . My back wheel skidded sideways a bit and I stood there aghast . Good god , doesn 't anybody teach kids any road sense ? ( Answer : no . And this is why I stop at intersections even when I don 't need to , because adults are no better . ) The kid hit the ground and bounced up again , grabbing his bicycle and starting to mount it . " Are you OK ? " I called . He 'd fallen hard , but apparently he 'd rolled the right way because he looked fine and said so . " Sorry ! Sorry ! " he shouted , and he and his friend giggled and sped off again , as fast as before . The last I saw of them they were far away , speeding through another stop sign . Apparently one accident wasn 't enough for them . I stopped worrying about the little shit when I tried to ride off again and discovered that my back wheel was buckled . The bike shop man tells me it 's too buckled to fix and will have to be replaced . It 's bloody expensive , and if I see that kid again I 'll be hitting him first . If he 's alive , that is . Darwin 's law suggests that he won 't be . First , some more of the temple grounds generally . This one is of the pond in the middle of the grounds , which is full of turtles . One year I came here in spring , and there were a lot of baby turtles . Someone had thrown in a whole slice of white bread , and a baby turtle had its front feet up on the bread and was paddling with its back feet . It looked very comfortable . I guess it was white bread surfing . Naturally I didn 't have a camera with me that day . But here are the turtles , sunning themselves on the raised platform in the middle of the pond . It 's not a great picture , but you can get the idea . I don 't have enough pictures of stalls . I was generally too involved in rummaging to remember I had my camera with me . But here is one , of my favourite kind of stall . There is an amazing amount of junk and I don 't know what a lot of it is . This just adds to the mystery . I think that wooden wheel thing is for winding wool , or silk . I said I 'd post some pictures from yesterday , so here are some . I took a lot , though , and this makes it difficult to choose which ones to put up . I 've decided that I 'll choose a few myself , and after that describe some of the others . If you want to see any of them , make a request and I 'll post it . First , a sort of general picture , giving some idea of what the place was like . This was taken from a slightly elevated position , but still only manages to capture only a fraction of what there was to see . The problem with this temple is that the only way to get a good overview is from a helicopter . You can 't even see the temple buildings in this one . Here is one of the temple buildings , but I 'm not sure if it 's the main one . Maybe it leads to the main building . I 'm not sure . The reason I 'm not sure is that I always get lost in these temple grounds . There are a lot of large buildings . Add the crowds , and you have a very muddled Badaunt . Obviously this was the main area , but I was too close to see the actual building complex . There were very few people inside . Most people were out in the temple grounds , wandering around and checking out the numerous stalls . We were there for over four hours and I don 't think we saw them all . Remember the picture I posted of a kimono stall at the last flea market I went to , where all the kimono were hanging up , tidy and beautifully presented ? That flea market was in Kobe , and was smaller and classier . This flea market is in in the middle of Osaka , in a fairly old and rundown neighbourhood , and is much larger , messier , and less genteel . It 's also quite a lot cheaper . Here is what a kimono stall looks like at Shi - Tennoji : You rummage through the piles of kimono and if you 're lucky you find a gem . While my friend and I were sitting on the steps ( with the inner temple area behind us , see previous picture ) , a beautiful young British woman started an extensive hunt through this stall , which was in front of us . She tried some kimono on . She was wearing jeans and boots and a big jersey ( sweater to Americans ) , and had a huge mass of curly dark hair - entirely wrong for ' traditional ' kimono wearing . But when she put one blue kimono on ( she is not in the picture , but the kimono is one of the blue bunch in the front left ) it looked stunning , even over jeans . I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted ( because I was too knackered to get up ) , " IT LOOKS WONDERFUL ! THAT ' S THE BEST ONE FOR YOU ! " and she turned around , looking surprised and uncertain . " Really ? " she said . " Do you think it 's better than this one ? " She held up another blue one , almost the same shade , but which somehow didn 't work for her . We assured her the first one was definitely the one , and she told us that actually she wanted to buy two , one for herself and one for her boyfriend in London . We spent quite a bit of time giving helpful advice , but both of us stuck by that blue one . She roped in some passing guy and got him trying on men 's kimonos for her so she could see what they looked like on . It was an entertaining and friendly interlude . I was feeling particularly happy while I was sitting there because I 'd just bought some bowls . I 've been looking for some more . I 'd bought two rice bowls , a long time ago , and regretted not getting more . The ones I got were expensive , but we 've been using them every day since then and they feel right in your hand when you lift them . They are beautiful , the balance is perfect , and there is something very satisfying about them . Before I bought those bowls I don 't think I 'd ever really understood the pleasure of eating from beautiful dishes . I 'd had nice dishes before but nothing like those bowls , which are over 100 years old . They are , somehow , exactly right , and I 've often wished I 'd thrown caution to the wind and bought more than two . I 've been looking for more ever since . They didn 't have to match ( and in any case that would be impossible ) , but they had to have a similar feeling of rightness . And yesterday , I found them . This picture isn 't a great one , although you can get some idea of what the bowls look like . I don 't know how old they are , but the designs are hand - painted so they 're not very new . I bought four , two rice bowls and two okazu ( side dish ) bowls . The okazu bowls are a little larger , and have lids that protrude over the sides of the bowl . The rice bowls lids fit inside . You can see these two types on the left of the photo . The rice bowls are in the front , and the okazu bowls just behind them . Now I 'm sort of wishing I 'd bought some of the plates as well , but actually they weren 't as big as I wanted . I already have some lovely plates , and the smaller ones don 't get used so often . I like to buy things I can use a lot . Also , while these dishes weren 't as expensive as my other rice bowls , they still weren 't that cheap . And if I 'm going to have mismatched dishes , I might as well wait and get some other mismatched ones , otherwise it 's going to look as though I had a set and then broke half of them . I 'd rather have it look as though I had several sets and then broke most of them ! The final picture today is my favourite , for no particular reason except that it makes me smile to look at it . There was a little path off the main area , which had a few stalls down one side of it . It 's a sort of side - entrance to the temple , probably a sort of tradesman 's entrance . There is space for parking , which wasn 't being used , and stalls down only one side of the path . On the other side , by the empty parking spaces , some people had stopped to rest . We stopped there for a little while , too , and took the weight off our feet . Then we carried on , and as we were leaving my friend said , " I think you should take a picture of that , " and I did . Perhaps next time I should just hand her the camera . It 's the best of the lot . I think that 's enough pictures for now , but following is a list of other pictures I took . If you want to see any of them , let me know and I 'll post them . Alternatively I could just post one or two with each blog entry for a while . I 've had a brilliant day . The weather was gorgeous , the flea market was crowded and lively and full of fascinating junk , the company was good ( the same friend I went to the last one with ) , and I took lots of pictures . They are not ready to post yet because they need some adjusting ( trimming , fixing the contrast , and so on ) and also resizing for the web . But here is one picture to start with , which shows the temple where the flea market was held . It also illustrates a charming detail about cities in Japan which is rather at odds with the general ugliness . Every city , or area within a city , has its own design of these : That 's right - it 's a manhole cover . And because I was in Tennoji , an area of Osaka , this one shows the temple which is Tennoji 's landmark . Only some of these manhole covers are coloured . The plain ones have the same design , but with no colour . I bought some bowls today . I will post a picture of them , but probably in a day or two . Right now I 'm exhausted and although I 'd rather just go to bed I need to plan three lessons for tomorrow first . I left the house at nine this morning and got home at nine this evening . It 's been a long , wonderful day , but unfortunately it isn 't over yet . I 'm thinking now I should have bought one of those dried snakes I saw , instead of just taking pictures of them . A snake strategically planted in the classroom would have taken care of my lesson plan problem . No students , no lesson plan , no problem . I 'm going to another flea market tomorrow . I intend to forget the work piled up here , forget the massive desk tidying job I 've been putting off for weeks , forget everything , and just enjoy myself . The weather is forecast to be sunny , a perfect autumn day , just like today . Tuesday is a public holiday , so I will catch up with my procrastinating then . I had been asking students to tell me a funny , frightening , exciting , or embarrassing thing that happened to them . ( I 've been getting them to tell anecdotes . ) One very small student , a gormless wee lad , chose to tell me an embarrassing story . His story was in terrible English which I won 't try to reproduce here , but the gist of it was that one day he was at the train station and three foreigners approached him and asked him for directions . He was a high school student at the time , and he was ' very surprised . ' He said he knew they were speaking English , but he couldn 't understand what they wanted . So he told them he didn 't speak English . Then he went to the other end of the platform , and then realised they 'd wanted directions he could probably have given if he 'd tried . I asked him why he was so embarrassed by this incident , and he looked up at me and said , " They were black . " And then he looked down , quivering . I think he knew it wasn 't really an adequate explanation , and his English wasn 't adequate to explain more , but . . . well , in a way , it was adequate . This kid is 18 , and he 's little . He makes me feel big , and I 'm not . He breaks into a sweat whenever he has to talk to me , even though he has improved over the year and doesn 't shake quite so badly these days . I 'm not an imposing person , but he still makes me feel like some sort of monster . So I can only imagine his reaction to being approached by not one but three foreigners , and not just foreign but tall , black foreigners . He must have been petrified . All three were men , and he said they were ' very tall ' . ( I should add here that he thinks I 'm ' very tall ' , and I 'm 164 cm , so it 's equally possible that they were very short . ) He 'd never seen a black person before . There aren 't many , here . I can just imagine three friendly black tourists towering over this wee boy and unintentionally scaring him witless . I asked him if they were friendly , and he looked surprised , and then said , " I think so , " and looked ashamed . But what I liked about this story is that he clearly knew there was something wrong with his reaction . He felt bad about it . I also like it that he told me - it 's sort of weird , really , since I 'm also a foreigner and he is also scared of me . It felt like a confession , and also a step forward . I asked him if he would try to communicate next time , if something like that happened again , and he got an inward look on his face as he struggled to imagine it . The idea clearly scared him at the same time as it made him think very , very hard . But finally he looked up with a frightened face and whispered , " I hope . " It 's the textbook ordering season , and the textbook publishers have come out of hibernation and are performing their mating dances . I don 't know what 's up with them this year . Perhaps there 's some sort of Viagra for textbook publishers . Everywhere we go , there they are , trying to push their latest book on us and telling us how wonderful it is . It 's starting to feel like we 're being stalked . I 've even been visited by the same guy twice . He was at one university lurking in the teachers ' room after work , waiting to pounce , and then turned up a week later at a different university to disturb our lunch break . ( To be fair , it 's kind of hard to get hold of us at any other time . ) This turned out to be a good thing , I thought , since instead of sending me the text I 'd asked for , for inspection , he 'd sent the sample CD that comes with the book , which wasn 't much use to me . After complaining about this , and while I had him on the spot , I asked for one other text as well . If he didn 't want to send it out , I told him , could he at least send an inspection copy to the school ? I will not use a book I haven 't checked out first . A couple of days ago the first book I 'd asked for finally arrived , but then instead of sending me the other one I wanted he sent me a different one , which his company had already sent me a copy of with their catalogue . My colleague , who had asked for two other books , got the same one . I guess that 's their latest and greatest , and they 're trying to get us to order it . Considering that he 'd also left an inspection copy at the school and we 'd already told him it was unsuitable we weren 't very impressed . The same company , yesterday , apparently organised a lunchtime meeting at the place I was at today . I 'm glad I wasn 't there , but from what I 'm told it did have some entertaining moments . They brought along the writer of the book they 're pushing ( yes , the same one I have two copies of , which I know I won 't be using ) , and also a ' very experienced teacher ' to give us some hints about how to use the book . The writer started off badly . She told the assembled teachers ( who had been bribed with pizza ) that she knew the problems we had with motivating students , and how important it was to ' engage their interest ' and ' get them involved in their own learning . ' For this reason , she said , she had researched the target audience and included only topics they were interested in . This made this book unique , she said , and particularly suited for the Japanese university student . My colleague told me he was intrigued by the idea of a ' unique ' textbook ' particularly suited for the Japanese university student , ' and picked up the sample copy and leafed through it . He frowned , puzzled , and picked up the book he 's been using this year . Sure enough , it had exactly the same topics as the new book . And exactly the same topics as every other textbook for English learning that has been published in Japan in the last twenty years or so . Our boss , however , wasn 't quite so restrained . When the writer introduced her special guest , the man with extensive English teaching experience in Japan , who had " been teaching here for years and has a lot to offer , " the boss interrupted . " We have a lot of experience right here in this room , " he said . " How long have you been teaching in Japan ? " " Four years , eh ? " said the boss , and no doubt got that horrible little smirk he gets when he 's about to be heavily sarcastic . ( I wish he wouldn 't do that . It spoils the effect . ) Then he went around all the teachers in the room - about twenty of them - asking how long they 'd been teaching in Japan . The same company is offering free drinks to any teacher who wants to go to a particular bar in Osaka tonight , where they 'll be buying rounds and telling their captive audience all about their latest and greatest offerings . I am not there , obviously . I 'm here . Even if it wasn 't on a weeknight when I have to be up at 5 . 30 am , even the free drinks don 't predispose me to being patronised by people who haven 't researched their audience properly . The same writer and ' experienced teacher ' will be there . I didn 't get my usual let - off - steam - dinner - with - the - guys tonight , either . I turned up at the Indian restaurant , as usual , and discovered that along with four other teachers , there were three strangers ; a short dark intense - looking bloke with glasses and two younger women who looked a bit more relaxed . As I removed my raincoat , one of them pulled out a seat for me . I was a bit surprised , but assumed that they were friends of one of the other guys . However , once I was seated , the little short bloke with glasses leaned forward earnestly and said , A quick look round at the guys ' faces showed me I wasn 't the only one who didn 't have a clue what he was talking about . " What meeting ? " I asked . " I haven 't heard about any meeting , " said one of the other guys . No . They were expecting us . It turned out they were from another textbook publishing company . This lot were really serious . They had come from New York ( the women , who were British ) and London ( the guy , who was American ) to research the textbook market in Japan , and were visiting various schools and universities and setting up meetings with teachers . I still don 't know who set up this particular meeting , but we hadn 't been informed . If it was the boss , who knows we go to the curry shop after work , I will have his guts for garters tomorrow . I did , however , perform a service for teachers in Japan at this meeting . I told the researchers that we would all appreciate it very much if they would remove , from all their textbooks , that horribly unnatural question that is the bane of English teachers everywhere : " What 's your hobby ? " This question has enraged me ever since I first encountered it , and most especially since I had a peculiar fan follow me around for a while in the area where I live . He 'd pop up in the most unexpected places , and one day when I went in a coffee shop to wait for my washing to dry at the launderette he followed me into the coffee shop . He wanted to talk , and I told him I didn 't want to , so he sat at a nearby table , watching me and grinning dementedly while I tried to read my book , and wrote a letter to me , on a paper napkin . When I left he presented the letter to me . It began , " Dear Lady . Where did you invade from ? What 's your hobby ? " stopped making sense for a bit , and ended " God save the Queen ! " Today I took to work a whole bunch of travel pamphlets in English that I 've collected over the years , and had one class working out travel plans for themselves based on the information in the pamphlets . They had a ball , getting serious about organising trips that would include all the places they were interested in . After a while , one of the students called my attention to a very small photo in one of the pamphlets from Malaysia , of a pineapple plantation . Because the picture was so tiny it was hard to see anything much except a bunch of people carrying pineapples through some low - growing plants . The student asked me , " Do pineapples grow on little bushes ? " I stopped and stared at her . " No , of course they don 't ! " I said . " What a funny idea ! They grow on . . . um . . . let me see . They grow on . . . er . . . " And then I realised I didn 't have the foggiest idea how pineapples grew . The student showed me the wee picture , and I squinted at it and didn 't learn anything . I apologised for my ignorance and told her I 'd look it up later . Back in the office at lunchtime I asked some other teachers , and they all reacted pretty much the way I did . " Oh , I know this one ! They grow on , um . . . er . . . trees ! No , bushes ! No , trees ! Yes , of course - pine trees ! No wait . . . er . . . " We discussed whether we 'd ever heard of anybody being bonked on the head walking under a pineapple tree , and wondered why they were called pineapples . We decided that the answer to the first question was no , we couldn 't remember hearing of such a thing , but perhaps they don 't fall until they are squishy and harmless . To the second , we realised , after a moment 's thought , that they 're called pineapples because they look like pinecones , not because they grow on pine trees . That seemed pretty obvious . But after that we were stumped . Finally it occurred to us to consult the secretary , whose computer is hooked up to the web . I looked up " pineapple plantation " , and found this . " Eh ? " I said when the picture appeared . I don 't know how I thought pineapples grew , but that wasn 't it . I called the other teachers over and had the satisfaction of hearing them do it too . " Eh ? " One added , " But it 's standing on its head ! " Funny the things you learn when you 're teaching language . Today I learned that pineapples grow upside - down . Is this something everybody already knew except us ? I mean , it was reassuring not to have all the others pointing and laughing at me and saying , " Didn 't you know that ? Are you stupid or something ? Everybody knows that ! " - but what if all the Wednesday teachers at that school are ignorant ? Today I used the haggling game again , in my community class . This class is of older learners . The ages range from mid - thirties to mid - seventies . They are beginners , and are keen to learn . They loved the game , and proved themselves to be very good hagglers , far better than the university students the other day . They were downright tricky , in fact , and at the end of the game I felt compelled to teach them a new word . I wrote I GOT RIPPED OFF ! on the board , and waited until they 'd all noticed it . ( Some of them were still haggling , being reluctant to stop the game before closing a sale . ) When they saw the words on the board , they all started scribbling in their notebooks . I waited . Eventually one of them asked , " What does ' ripped off ' mean ? " Sometimes it 's faster to give a translation , so I dredged through my pitiful Japanese vocabulary for one . " Inchiki , I said , then mumbled to myself , " No , wait , that 's what I call The Man , that 's not it , or is it . . . ? " Then I said , " Well , it might be inchiki , or possibly damasu " " Watch out for Mrs Tapioka ! * " I said , sternly . " She ripped me off ! Do you know how much she charged me for half a Chinese cabbage ? " Little lightbulbs went off all over the place , and there was uproar as discussions erupted amongst the women over whether or not that was the going price . ( The only man , Mr Happi * , aged seventy - something , was laughing so hard he started to wheeze alarmingly and couldn 't contribute . ) I think I won in the end , although Mrs Tapioca refused to give me a refund . I will never understand why , when it comes to western design , many ordinary Japanese people seem to lose all their aesthetic judgement . They 'll get the Japanese design just right , but the western touches will be so wrong you wonder if they suddenly went blind . The reason I was thinking of this today was that I was hanging out washing , and looking out over the back where there is now a large , ugly apartment building behind us . If I lean out a little from the balcony I can almost butt my head on it . When I first came here there was an old Japanese house on that section , but it was half destroyed in the earthquake , and demolished shortly afterwards . That house behind ours was the first real Japanese home I visited in Japan . The people there kindly invited me to lunch when I first arrived . They were an ordinary middle - aged middle - class couple , with married children who had moved away . The old house had a lovely tatami - style traditional interior and a huge and gorgeous Butsudan - family altar - in the main room . To one side of the Butsudan there was a scroll depicting a misty mountain scene , which complemented perfectly the muted wall colours and the tatami . It would have been wonderful , except that on the other side of the Butsudan they 'd carefully tacked up a life - sized poster of Sylvester Stallone . Several beers later I discovered that the tiny toilet room was festooned with frilly flowers - a frilly flowered toilet seat cover , a frilly flowered toilet paper holder cover , a frilly flowered mat , etc etc . The final touch was a large soft padded plastic Mickey Mouse poster on the toilet room wall . The overall effect was ghastly , funny , and totally baffling . I think I went into culture shock right then and there , sitting on the toilet with frills tickling my bum , staring at Mickey Mouse . Still , I miss that old house , and the old neighbours . They had a traditional garden as well , with a lovely old bent and gnarled tree that we could see from our balcony . Now the people are all strangers , and from the balcony we can see a blank wall . I have come to the conclusion that my head is just too heavy . It 's all those brains in there , weighing me down . That 's why my neck hurts so much . My acupuncturist tries to tell me that it is the humidity , which has still not gone away ( it 's supposed to , tomorrow ) although the weather has become much cooler . This is meant to be one of the dry months , but it hasn 't been , so far . But I reckon it 's my brains . Clever , clever me . Also , ouch . And in case you weren 't paying attention the last time I wrote this ( if I did actually write this - I can 't remember , perhaps due to a bang on the head ) : Never , ever let yourself get a bang on the head . It messes up your neck forever . That 's my advice for the day . Avoid accidents . Also , don 't be too clever . I was too clever today , when I decided to borrow my Iranian friend 's joke . I found myself in a lift with two Americans and a Pom . ( This sounds like the beginning of a joke , doesn 't it ? It is . It 's the beginning of a failed joke . ) I hadn 't seen any of them for two weeks , so it seemed like a good opportunity . " Congratulations on your newly re - elected President ! " I said , brightly . Everybody stared at me . The silence stretched . The doors went ping ! and closed . A atmosphere of deep gloom would have descended except that we were going up , so in fact the atmosphere of deep gloom ascended . Then the Pom said , gently , " Ha ha , " said one of the Americans , heavily . They both looked infinitely depressed . The doors went ping again and we exited . The Americans stomped off , and I mentally apologised to their students . I called one of my brothers tonight , mainly because he called me yesterday when I wasn 't home and I thought there might be something urgent . There wasn 't . He just wanted to chat . He 's the sensitive and caring brother . He calls every six months or so just to make sure I 'm still alive . SCB said that he 'd checked this out . He 'd asked YB , " Have you heard from Badaunt recently ? ' , and got the nonchalant reply , ' Oh , yeah , she emailed once or twice . " " So what did she have to say for herself ? " SCB asked . " I noticed , " I said , and we giggled some more . We shared a few insulting but funny anecdotes about YB . After a while SCB had a sudden attack of conscience and said , " Ah , but he 's all right , really . We shouldn 't laugh about him like this behind his back . " " Why not ? " I asked . " Isn 't that what he 's for ? I certainly haven 't found any other use for him yet ! Besides , it 's nothing he doesn 't know . I laugh about him to his face , too . And in email . " After I got off the phone I checked to see what my last ' nothing much , just the usual ' email was about , and discovered it was one I 'd written in the middle of one of those typhoons . It 's getting pretty windy here , I 'd said . The rest of the back fence just blew away . Today I had my students role - playing a flea market game . This is always great fun , which is why I do it . We practice the language for haggling in English first , and for describing things , and then I divide the class in two , half sellers and half buyers , and set up ' stalls ' at the back of the classroom . The sellers decide what they 're selling ( we use bits of paper with pictures or words ) , and the prices they paid for those things , and then try to make a profit by selling them for more . It gets very noisy and exciting . Then the buyers and sellers swap places , and it all starts again . I berated the business class for this . " What are you thinking ? " I demanded . " You are business majors ! Twenty years from now when you guys are in charge Japan is going to collapse ! " Last week I had some students writing recipes for me . One student didn 't finish hers , and gave it to me today at the beginning of class . It was even printed , very unusual here , where most students don 't have a computer . I skimmed through it , and the following instruction caught my eye : I decided to bring the recipe home to try , but I can 't figure out how to dissolve the egg . I 'm working on it , though . Flying is next . This morning when I went to the front door to get the newspaper , I could see that the little ginger cat was sunning itself on the front doorstep again . It comes back every year in the cooler months , and uses the doormat as a sunbed . Through the frosted glass of the front door I could see that it was having a wash as I approached the door , and I knew which bit it was washing , too . One back leg was sticking straight up in the air . It was a 6 - shaped cat . I haven 't seen it since July , when I accidentally gave it a surprise . When I started unlocking the door , the cat quietly slunk off and disappeared under the gate , going around to hide behind the wall , probably thinking I would never know it had been there . I don 't think it realises we can see it from inside . I opened the door and went to the letter box to get the newspaper , and as I was coming back our two visiting turtledoves swooped over the wall and almost hit me . I ducked . They flapped up again and and did a crash landing in the tree , and from there they cocked their heads and watched me . I felt guilty because I had nothing to feed them . Usually we feed the birds in the garden by leaving birdseed on the wall under the tree . The idea was , originally , to encourage the few bulbuls and warblers we 'd seen about the place . What we actually ended up with was large numbers of extremely demanding sparrows and these two rather stupid turtledoves . Still , it 's better than nothing . We used to have no birds in our garden at all , and while it 's a very small garden , it didn 't feel like any garden at all without birds . So we continue to feed the sparrows and turtledoves . This fascinates the cat , who is apparently convinced that one day it will be able to catch one . Sometimes I see it crouched on the top of the wall , barely able to move because of the painfully spiky rose branches it 's tangled up in , and staring up into the tree hopefully , as if it thinks a bird might accidentally fly down and land in its mouth . Today , right after the turtledoves crashed the tree , two paws and a dePosted by I had arranged to meet one friend , but the arrangement was in doubt and I hadn 't been able to get in touch with her . So I emailed to say that I 'd be there , and that if she didn 't turn up never mind . I had to go to Osaka anyway , and had to eat lunch , so it might as well be at my favourite Iranian restaurant . I would take a good book , and could always chat with the manager if he wasn 't too busy . He is a funny and intelligent man . I joined them for lunch , we talked for a couple of hours , and then the other two , who had been to Koya - san and had ended up staying overnight , and had just happened to suddenly decide to visit the restaurant on their way back , said it was time for them to get home . They 'd already been gone a day longer than they 'd expected and had things to do . I decided to go as well , as it was clear that my friend wasn 't coming . But just as I was about to stand up , the other friend ( the one I 'd emailed who had said she wouldn 't have time to come ) turned up . So the first two friends left and I stayed , with the third one . While we were there a couple of guys came in , separately , both American . The manager , who is Iranian , had a running joke going . Whenever an American came in he 'd congratulate them politely and seriously on their new president . ( To understand why this was such an effective practical joke you have to understand that every single American I 've met in Japan has ended up loathing Bush , even those dyed - in - the - wool Republicans who voted for him the first time around . They are sick of feeling ashamed . He is an embarrassment to all Americans except those 52 % in America , apparently . I guess there 's a lot of news that doesn 't get covered much in the US . ) The reactions of these two guys ( and of my friend ) were really funny . They went pink and looked ready to explode , but were rendered speechless by the manager 's apparent sincerity . One of them tried to claim he was Canadian . When challenged on this he said he was Canadian in his heart , and paperwork wasn 't that important , was it ? We ended up having a sort of party , including the two American guys . I had lunch twice . Other customers came and went . Some Japanese businessmen came in briefly and had a very fast meeting at the table next to us . When I rolled a cigarette they goggled . I didn 't notice because I wasn 't looking , so it was a surprise to me when my friend started giggling . " Don 't look now , but those guys think you 're rolling a joint , " she said . " Their eyes are popping out of their heads . " ( People don 't smoke rollies here , except me . ) I sucked earnestly on my ' joint ' and offered it to my friend , who almost fell off her chair laughing . The businessmen suddenly got up and left . I apologised to the manager for giving his restaurant a reputation for being a hotbed of foreign terrorist drug addicts , and offered him a rollie in compensation , which he accepted . I told her , " I want to be able to tie my hair back off my neck on hot days , and for it to cover my neck on cold days . And I want it off my face . Aside from that , do what you like . " She grinned and took over . She asked me who cut it last time , and when . At one point , as she was lifting bits of hair and watching how they fell , she laughed and said , " I think your hair must be a real problem for most Japanese hairdressers . They wouldn 't know what to do with it . Wavy at the back , straight in the front , really fine , thick , soft . . . oh , dear . This is not Japanese hair . " She was right . My hair freaks out most Japanese hairdressers . They touch it , shriek , " Eh ? " and call their co - workers over to feel it . It 's different . I start feeling like I don 't have hair ; I have some sort of alien substance stuck to my head . My usual hairdresser , who is the daughter of my old , good hairdresser , who died , hasn 't learned as much as I 'd hoped she would . She didn 't do too badly the first couple of times , but then she started messing up badly . The last cut she gave me was a disaster slightly worse than the disaster she gave me the time before that . I 'd hoped she would get used to my hair , but she didn 't . I ended up having to get the cut ' repaired ' when I visited New Zealand in February , and the hairdresser I went to then told me she 'd done her best but basically I 'd just have to let it grow out . That 's what I 've been doing , and tying it back in the meantime . After some discussion , during which my new hairdresser said " How about . . . ? " and I said , " Whatever you think will look OK , " she gave me a sort of bob cut . I liked the way she talked about my hair , as if it was now hers , not mine . " I think I 'll grow these bits out , " she said , " So I 'll leave them for now . And I want to show the wave , so I 'll layer it a little bit here . . . " " Sounds fine to me , " I said , to everything . I 'm useless at deciding what to do with my hair . I don 't care enough , unless it 's really awful . It was really awful before , but it 's not now . She did a good job . I won 't need to wear a hat all winter after all . Today I had my students doing a quiz . There were some questions in there with words that were especially included for them to practice their pronunciation of the ' th ' sound . One of these was rather mean , when I think about it - I have trouble pronouncing it myself , especially if I 'm trying to demonstrate it . It 's OK when it just comes up in conversation , but try standing up in front of a large class and saying it loudly . Sixth is a nasty little word . You have to be careful not to spit on the students in the front row . The quiz game helps me to avoid this sort of problem , because they teach themselves . They have fun doing it , too , which is always a bonus . One exchange I overheard went like this : And there you have it - a perfect little mini - lesson in pronunciation . Perfect because my job was to sit there and not interfere while they taught each other the importance of pronouncing things understandably , and I got to have a little rest . I wish I could figure out how to do that more often . Tonight The Man and I were talking about Shosei Koda , the young Japanese man who was beheaded in Iraq . We agreed that it was stupid of him to have gone to Iraq in the first place . " Didn 't he see the news ? " I asked . " Didn 't he know how dangerous it was ? " The Man agreed . But he also said that he hoped people wouldn 't remember the guy only for that . " I hope that people remember that when we are young we always do stupid things , " he said . " We all do things that could get us killed , stupid things . We have survived our stupid things , and learned from them . He just didn 't get that chance . " " I 've read about that kind of area in China , " he told me . " And it was dangerous . Anything could have happened . Those people were outcasts . They had nothing to lose , and you were alone . " " It was very dangerous , " he told me . " I 've heard and read about it , and it was . They might have killed you . That sort of area is known to be dangerous , by local people . " " There was nothing in the guide books about it , or in the media , or in any of the books I 'd read about China before going there , " I said . " And we weren 't connected to the Internet then , so I couldn 't look it up . It wasn 't the same kind of thing as what Koda did . Everybody knows Iraq is the most dangerous place on the planet right now , for people who are white , or Korean , or Japanese , or who have any connection with the U . S . And Japan has thrown in its lot with America for this particular adventure . He knew that . " But now I wonder . At that time , in China , I 'd got lost . I had been lost for a few days . I knew which city I was in , because that was the destination of the bus . And I knew my friend was living there somewhere . But I hadn 't been able to locate her , and when I tried to call there was no answer . I was staying in a rather sleazy room in the old building of the ' Overseas Chinese Hotel ' , which was supposed to be strictly for overseas Chinese visitors , and was spending my days wandering around the town trying to locate the university where my friend was teaching . Nobody seemed to have heard of it . I hadn 't seen any non - Chinese people for at least three days . On one of my long wanderings , I 'd ended up , at night , walking down a street that was not well lit , and which got darker and darker and less populated until it was empty of people . And really , if I 'd been thinking like a sensible person I would not have continued . But I did , and then after a while I decided to turn back , but wanted to go back a different way ( having an aversion to going back the same way I 'd just come ) , so intending to go around a block and head back on a different street , I turned a dark corner into an alley to cut across the block . It was a very dark alley , and when I was well into it I was suddenly surrounded by women who came to me out of the dark , like wraiths , carrying babies and holding their hands out for money , or perhaps for food . They surrounded me so I couldn 't move . When I indicated that I didn 't have money on me ( which I didn 't - I was carrying only enough to get me back to my hotel if I got lost and needed a taxi , supposing I could find a taxi ) , they thrust their babies at me , saying something I couldn 't understand . I could only understand that they were desperate and wanted me to do something for them . When somebody holds a baby out to you , you automatically stretch out your arms to take it . I started to do this , and then something stopped me , and I held back . I suddenly knew that if I took a baby the women would disappear . My arms ached to take them , but I didn 't . The women were pleading and almost ( but not quite ) threatening . It was as if they had so little hope they didn 't even have the energy to threaten . It was both sad and frightening . The women and the babies were very thin and dirty , dressed in rags , and the babies were terrifyingly silent . They should have been crying and distressed but instead they were painfully quiet and still , huge eyes in the gloom , sores on their hairless heads and faces , gazing at me blankly . They weren 't really babies , I realised . They were stunted toddlers . They were beautiful , even with their sores and thin faces and huge staring eyes . They were luminous and pathetic in the darkness . There was nothing I could do . I had to walk away . It was terrible , walking away . I stroked the babies ' faces , and apologized to their mothers in a language they couldn 't understand , and walked away , leaving them there . They parted for me so I could go . I didn 't feel it was dangerous , but I did feel it was an awful thing to do , to walk away like that , and I hated myself for it . There were just too many of them , and I couldn 't help them all . If there had been just one woman and her baby , who knows what I might have done , or tried to do , to help them ? But there were at least a dozen . I originally told The Man there were twenty or so , but I think there were probably fewer . It just seemed like more . He said , " You don 't know that . You said it was dark . Maybe the men were waiting in the shadows . Maybe you just got lucky . Maybe you did something right by mistake , and they spared you . But my point is that if you 'd been kidnapped , or killed , or hurt , people would have said , ' What was she doing there ? Why was she in such a dark and dangerous area ? ' And even though nobody knew of it before , they 'd all know about it now , and would think you 'd been stupid . " Yes , the guy who went to Iraq was stupid , and he didn 't think , but we all do stupid things and don 't think , sometimes . And we learn . He didn 't get the chance to learn . " I guess The Man is right . But I 'm still distracted by the idea that I did something so dangerous . That hadn 't occurred to me . I didn 't know , even after it was all over , that the area I went to was dangerous . I still find it hard to believe . But I do remember feeling scared , and I wonder why . I 'd always thought it was just the shock , and the thought that these women were so far outside society that they weren 't even mentioned in guidebooks , or in books about China . I didn 't know who they were . They didn 't fit any picture I had of China . They were not ' official ' people , so I didn 't know they existed . Nobody knew . They were invisible to the ' real ' world . I was naive . I thought that anything that wasn 't in the guide books or in the news didn 't exist . If it wasn 't written , it wasn 't there . How silly is that ? The Japanese guy was naive , too . He thought , " Well , I 'm not a political person , I 'm not trying to change anything , I am not representing Japan , I am just an individual who wants to know what is really going on . I 'm just curious . People will see I am innocent , and they won 't hurt me . " And he thought , as we always do , But innocence doesn 't work like that . We are all symbols of something , whether we like it or not . I am a symbol of the rich , white world . I don 't like it , but that 's what I am . I am clean , well - fed , healthy and white . To those women I must have been unimaginably rich . Koda was rich , dressed in the clothing of the enemy , had a visa stamp for Israel in his passport , and he represented Japan , whether he liked it or not , and whether he knew it or not . I still don 't know whether being in that place at night was dangerous for me . The Man might be wrong about that . But it could have been , easily . And if I 'd died , people would probably have thought I was stupid . I could have been comfortably at home in my safe little New Zealand , across the other side of the world . If I 'd been hurt I would have become a person who had everything and threw it away for personal thrills and ' fun ' . I didn 't have to be there in a dark unknown alley in a Chinese town at night , alone . I was asking for it . It was a smaller scale stupidity than the Japanese guy , but really , it was based on the same foolish impulse , or wrong instinct . The same thought of it won 't happen to me . The difference is that I survived . Posted by |
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive . I have not tried any of these , but there are a lot of ideas here , and they look good . At the very least you will be inspired . Last night on the train I had fun teasing The Man about his way of offering me choices . " I like the way you include me in all our decisions , " I told him . " You always ask me first before doing something . " " Oh yes it is , " I said . " ' Are you cold ? ' you ask , when you come into the room . ' Do you want the heater on ? ' And when I say no , I 'm fine , you tell me it 's very cold and turn it on anyway . " " Oh yes , you do , " I said . " What about when you wanted an extra blanket on the bed . ' Do you want another blanket ? ' you asked . ' I 'm fine ' , I said , and you put another one on anyway . " " Yes , I know . You do everything for me , " I said . " The other day , when we 'd been walking a lot and wanted to stop somewhere for coffee , you asked me which coffee shop I wanted to go to . I said the one we were passing looked fine to me , and you said it didn 't look very good , and why didn 't we try the other one up the street a bit . So we did . " The jazz concert was great . It was also very , very long . It was held at the NHK concert hall in Osaka , started at five , and finished shortly before nine . By the time we got home it was nearly ten , and we hadn 't eaten . There are no restaurants open around the NHK concert hall on a Sunday night . The hall was packed . I don 't know how many people it holds , but I heard someone mention two thousand and something . A lot of people . There were something like 40 musicians taking part in the concert , which was not a retirement concert as I 'd thought ( i . e . he 's not retiring ) , but a 50th anniversary concert . That 's fifty years of performing - the pianist , Zensho , is 70 . He 'd collected many of the musicians he 's played with through the years , and probably about a third of them were similarly aged . They were wonderful . Zensho was on the stage the whole time , looking about 55 , which he does close up , too ( does jazz keep you young ? ) and he was superb . ' Play ' is exactly the right verb for what he does with a piano . Today The Man and I went shopping at Uniqlo , a large discount clothing store which has opened a branch near here . Well , quite near . ( It was a longer cycle than we 'd anticipated . ) We bought a few things for winter - polo neck tops , a couple of jerseys ( sweaters , for Americans ) , and so on . It was all very cheap and the quality is good . While we were there I was trying on a jersey and looked in a mirror . The lighting was good . Too good , in fact , and I got a nasty shock . " God , I look horrible , " I said to The Man . " Old and tired and worn out , like I 'm sick or something . " The Man looked at me . " Don 't worry , " he said , cheerfully . " You always look tired . It 's the shape of your eyes . " Later we cycled to another place , quite a long way off in the other direction , and splashed out on a new top futon . It was on sale , but still quite expensive . Our old one is ratty . The feathers have gone all flat and it 's not warm any more . It 's very old . When we got home The Man and I had a wee fight while we were struggling to get the futon into its cover . According to The Man I was doing it all wrong . According to me I was doing exactly the right thing and it was the stupid cover 's fault , not mine . Why are those things so bloody difficult ? Why don 't they make it easier ? Can 't they make them so the covers open all down one side , instead of having to thread this great ballooning feathery thing through a small hole ? It 's silly . The new futon feels great and the expense was worth it . I tested it . I would have stayed there , testing it some more , but I have to do the washing and then prepare some lessons for next week . We 're going to a jazz concert tomorrow . The pianist is an old guy who is retiring , and this is his last concert . He 's very good . And it 's a good thing The Man remembered , because I 'd forgotten all about it . Imagine being able to see with your tongue , or with your ears . This NY Times article describes how a new device , the BrainPort , is making it possible for blind people to regain some vision . The BrainPort also makes all kinds of other things possible , and it 's very , very weird to think about . To the ESL teachers who come here looking for ways to teach the simple present tense , I apologize . I 'd be annoyed too , if I wanted to filch a lesson plan of the Internet ( I do it all the time ) and instead got me rabbitting on irrelevantly about something quite different . Yes , I have noticed your searches , and feel guilty every time one pops up . I recommend that you go here instead , at least for a start . Also , you need to narrow your search . Using Google , include ESL " lesson plan " " present simple " ( include the quotes ) in your search , and you 'll narrow it down a bit . When I have time to figure out how to make a sidebar with some useful links , I 'll do it . That way when you turn up here , instead of just getting frustrated and cranky you 'll have somewhere useful to go next . I have dozens of teaching links bookmarked . I just don 't have time right now to check them out and make sure they 're still there , and then figure out how to make the sidebar . But I will . Promise . And sorry for wasting your time . I know how busy you are . I 've been using Bloglines for a while now , and as anyone who uses it will know it gives you suggestions for blogs you might be interested in . You get a message that says : " Based on your current subscriptions , Bloglines has generated this list of feeds that you might be interested in . This list is updated daily . " Sometimes the list contains some very interesting blogs , and this is a good thing if I have time to read them and a bad thing if I don 't , because I add them to my feeds and end up with a huge backlog of unread but probably fascinating blogs . But recently something a little disturbing has started happening . It has started recommending my own blog to me . It has become quite pushy about it , moving me right to the top of the recommended list . I 'm not sure whether to be flattered or alarmed . Does this mean I only read and write about the things that interest me ? It makes me feel terribly narrow - minded , but on the other hand , well , should I read and write about things that don 't interest me ? And what is my blog about , anyway , that would make it so fascinating to me ? Even I 'm not sure , and I write it . I can 't think what gave Bloglines the idea I 'd be interested in reading such nonsense . After we 'd finished laughing at his hair I asked him if the driving test was hard . " Oh , no , " he said . " You just had to give a pint of blood . " We thought about it . It made sense , in a mad sort of way . Get your licence , have an accident , and be refilled with your own blood . I asked what it was like , living there . " Oh , it was great ! " he said , enthusiastically . " Wonderful entertainment , you know . You get invited out to public beheadings every Friday night . " He also said that you could fill your car for about ten cents , but unfortunately water was more like ten dollars a gallon . And whisky was about one hundred dollars a bottle . One day , he said , when a certain embassy was having a piano delivered , the crate bounced a bit too much on the docks as it was being unloaded and started to leak whisky , almost causing a Diplomatic Incident . After working there for three years he 'd saved enough to go back to England and buy a house , but he said he wouldn 't do it again . The principal of the school where he worked is still there , though . Funny how every Thursday evening I learn a little more about my colleagues . We work together every week but barely have time to talk . An hour or two over curry , though , and little surprises keep popping up . I 've worked with this guy for seven or eight years and never knew he 'd lived in Saudi Arabia . Today as I was cycling to work ( very carefully , see my last blog entry ) a woman shot out of a side road without looking either way to see if anybody was coming , and I braked sharply and swerved to avoid her . She didn 't see me . She cycled on obliviously , and I followed more slowly , wondering how on earth anybody in Japan makes it to adulthood . She had a baby on the front of her bicycle and a toddler on the back , and had sped straight through a stop sign out into a fairly busy street . Eventually she turned into another busy street , also without looking first , and narrowly missed a garbage truck that was coming the other way . A bit later there was another incident when an older woman cycling towards me , slowly and carefully , got a big surprise . A crow , which had been sitting on a fence facing me but not visible to her , suddenly flew out and passed right in front of her face . She swerved and shouted , then stopped and stood there for a moment , breathing heavily and looking shocked . It must have been scary - this huge black thing swooped right in front of her face so close she must have felt the wind from its wings . The crow landed in a tree and looked smug . I think it did it on purpose . From now on I 'll be watching out for stupid cyclists , stupid drivers , and crows . I think I also need some protective demons , like the ones pictured below . These are the demons guarding the gates of Shi - Tennoji , where I went on Sunday . I want protective demons that look like that . I decided to go out and do a little grocery shopping just now , on my bicycle ( with the wonderful baskets ) . It is a beautiful autumn day . I stopped at an intersection and looked to see if anyone was coming . Someone was . Two someones , in fact . They had the stop sign , not me ( although I stopped anyway , because often cars don 't stop there ) - but they ignored it . These two kids on bicycles , going as fast as they could , came zooming down the road , straight through the stop sign , and zoomed into the road I was in . One of them rode full speed into the back wheel of my bicycle . Crash ! He flew off his bike and it skidded across the road . My back wheel skidded sideways a bit and I stood there aghast . Good god , doesn 't anybody teach kids any road sense ? ( Answer : no . And this is why I stop at intersections even when I don 't need to , because adults are no better . ) The kid hit the ground and bounced up again , grabbing his bicycle and starting to mount it . " Are you OK ? " I called . He 'd fallen hard , but apparently he 'd rolled the right way because he looked fine and said so . " Sorry ! Sorry ! " he shouted , and he and his friend giggled and sped off again , as fast as before . The last I saw of them they were far away , speeding through another stop sign . Apparently one accident wasn 't enough for them . I stopped worrying about the little shit when I tried to ride off again and discovered that my back wheel was buckled . The bike shop man tells me it 's too buckled to fix and will have to be replaced . It 's bloody expensive , and if I see that kid again I 'll be hitting him first . If he 's alive , that is . Darwin 's law suggests that he won 't be . First , some more of the temple grounds generally . This one is of the pond in the middle of the grounds , which is full of turtles . One year I came here in spring , and there were a lot of baby turtles . Someone had thrown in a whole slice of white bread , and a baby turtle had its front feet up on the bread and was paddling with its back feet . It looked very comfortable . I guess it was white bread surfing . Naturally I didn 't have a camera with me that day . But here are the turtles , sunning themselves on the raised platform in the middle of the pond . It 's not a great picture , but you can get the idea . I don 't have enough pictures of stalls . I was generally too involved in rummaging to remember I had my camera with me . But here is one , of my favourite kind of stall . There is an amazing amount of junk and I don 't know what a lot of it is . This just adds to the mystery . I think that wooden wheel thing is for winding wool , or silk . I said I 'd post some pictures from yesterday , so here are some . I took a lot , though , and this makes it difficult to choose which ones to put up . I 've decided that I 'll choose a few myself , and after that describe some of the others . If you want to see any of them , make a request and I 'll post it . First , a sort of general picture , giving some idea of what the place was like . This was taken from a slightly elevated position , but still only manages to capture only a fraction of what there was to see . The problem with this temple is that the only way to get a good overview is from a helicopter . You can 't even see the temple buildings in this one . Here is one of the temple buildings , but I 'm not sure if it 's the main one . Maybe it leads to the main building . I 'm not sure . The reason I 'm not sure is that I always get lost in these temple grounds . There are a lot of large buildings . Add the crowds , and you have a very muddled Badaunt . Obviously this was the main area , but I was too close to see the actual building complex . There were very few people inside . Most people were out in the temple grounds , wandering around and checking out the numerous stalls . We were there for over four hours and I don 't think we saw them all . Remember the picture I posted of a kimono stall at the last flea market I went to , where all the kimono were hanging up , tidy and beautifully presented ? That flea market was in Kobe , and was smaller and classier . This flea market is in in the middle of Osaka , in a fairly old and rundown neighbourhood , and is much larger , messier , and less genteel . It 's also quite a lot cheaper . Here is what a kimono stall looks like at Shi - Tennoji : You rummage through the piles of kimono and if you 're lucky you find a gem . While my friend and I were sitting on the steps ( with the inner temple area behind us , see previous picture ) , a beautiful young British woman started an extensive hunt through this stall , which was in front of us . She tried some kimono on . She was wearing jeans and boots and a big jersey ( sweater to Americans ) , and had a huge mass of curly dark hair - entirely wrong for ' traditional ' kimono wearing . But when she put one blue kimono on ( she is not in the picture , but the kimono is one of the blue bunch in the front left ) it looked stunning , even over jeans . I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted ( because I was too knackered to get up ) , " IT LOOKS WONDERFUL ! THAT ' S THE BEST ONE FOR YOU ! " and she turned around , looking surprised and uncertain . " Really ? " she said . " Do you think it 's better than this one ? " She held up another blue one , almost the same shade , but which somehow didn 't work for her . We assured her the first one was definitely the one , and she told us that actually she wanted to buy two , one for herself and one for her boyfriend in London . We spent quite a bit of time giving helpful advice , but both of us stuck by that blue one . She roped in some passing guy and got him trying on men 's kimonos for her so she could see what they looked like on . It was an entertaining and friendly interlude . I was feeling particularly happy while I was sitting there because I 'd just bought some bowls . I 've been looking for some more . I 'd bought two rice bowls , a long time ago , and regretted not getting more . The ones I got were expensive , but we 've been using them every day since then and they feel right in your hand when you lift them . They are beautiful , the balance is perfect , and there is something very satisfying about them . Before I bought those bowls I don 't think I 'd ever really understood the pleasure of eating from beautiful dishes . I 'd had nice dishes before but nothing like those bowls , which are over 100 years old . They are , somehow , exactly right , and I 've often wished I 'd thrown caution to the wind and bought more than two . I 've been looking for more ever since . They didn 't have to match ( and in any case that would be impossible ) , but they had to have a similar feeling of rightness . And yesterday , I found them . This picture isn 't a great one , although you can get some idea of what the bowls look like . I don 't know how old they are , but the designs are hand - painted so they 're not very new . I bought four , two rice bowls and two okazu ( side dish ) bowls . The okazu bowls are a little larger , and have lids that protrude over the sides of the bowl . The rice bowls lids fit inside . You can see these two types on the left of the photo . The rice bowls are in the front , and the okazu bowls just behind them . Now I 'm sort of wishing I 'd bought some of the plates as well , but actually they weren 't as big as I wanted . I already have some lovely plates , and the smaller ones don 't get used so often . I like to buy things I can use a lot . Also , while these dishes weren 't as expensive as my other rice bowls , they still weren 't that cheap . And if I 'm going to have mismatched dishes , I might as well wait and get some other mismatched ones , otherwise it 's going to look as though I had a set and then broke half of them . I 'd rather have it look as though I had several sets and then broke most of them ! The final picture today is my favourite , for no particular reason except that it makes me smile to look at it . There was a little path off the main area , which had a few stalls down one side of it . It 's a sort of side - entrance to the temple , probably a sort of tradesman 's entrance . There is space for parking , which wasn 't being used , and stalls down only one side of the path . On the other side , by the empty parking spaces , some people had stopped to rest . We stopped there for a little while , too , and took the weight off our feet . Then we carried on , and as we were leaving my friend said , " I think you should take a picture of that , " and I did . Perhaps next time I should just hand her the camera . It 's the best of the lot . I think that 's enough pictures for now , but following is a list of other pictures I took . If you want to see any of them , let me know and I 'll post them . Alternatively I could just post one or two with each blog entry for a while . I 've had a brilliant day . The weather was gorgeous , the flea market was crowded and lively and full of fascinating junk , the company was good ( the same friend I went to the last one with ) , and I took lots of pictures . They are not ready to post yet because they need some adjusting ( trimming , fixing the contrast , and so on ) and also resizing for the web . But here is one picture to start with , which shows the temple where the flea market was held . It also illustrates a charming detail about cities in Japan which is rather at odds with the general ugliness . Every city , or area within a city , has its own design of these : That 's right - it 's a manhole cover . And because I was in Tennoji , an area of Osaka , this one shows the temple which is Tennoji 's landmark . Only some of these manhole covers are coloured . The plain ones have the same design , but with no colour . I bought some bowls today . I will post a picture of them , but probably in a day or two . Right now I 'm exhausted and although I 'd rather just go to bed I need to plan three lessons for tomorrow first . I left the house at nine this morning and got home at nine this evening . It 's been a long , wonderful day , but unfortunately it isn 't over yet . I 'm thinking now I should have bought one of those dried snakes I saw , instead of just taking pictures of them . A snake strategically planted in the classroom would have taken care of my lesson plan problem . No students , no lesson plan , no problem . I 'm going to another flea market tomorrow . I intend to forget the work piled up here , forget the massive desk tidying job I 've been putting off for weeks , forget everything , and just enjoy myself . The weather is forecast to be sunny , a perfect autumn day , just like today . Tuesday is a public holiday , so I will catch up with my procrastinating then . I had been asking students to tell me a funny , frightening , exciting , or embarrassing thing that happened to them . ( I 've been getting them to tell anecdotes . ) One very small student , a gormless wee lad , chose to tell me an embarrassing story . His story was in terrible English which I won 't try to reproduce here , but the gist of it was that one day he was at the train station and three foreigners approached him and asked him for directions . He was a high school student at the time , and he was ' very surprised . ' He said he knew they were speaking English , but he couldn 't understand what they wanted . So he told them he didn 't speak English . Then he went to the other end of the platform , and then realised they 'd wanted directions he could probably have given if he 'd tried . I asked him why he was so embarrassed by this incident , and he looked up at me and said , " They were black . " And then he looked down , quivering . I think he knew it wasn 't really an adequate explanation , and his English wasn 't adequate to explain more , but . . . well , in a way , it was adequate . This kid is 18 , and he 's little . He makes me feel big , and I 'm not . He breaks into a sweat whenever he has to talk to me , even though he has improved over the year and doesn 't shake quite so badly these days . I 'm not an imposing person , but he still makes me feel like some sort of monster . So I can only imagine his reaction to being approached by not one but three foreigners , and not just foreign but tall , black foreigners . He must have been petrified . All three were men , and he said they were ' very tall ' . ( I should add here that he thinks I 'm ' very tall ' , and I 'm 164 cm , so it 's equally possible that they were very short . ) He 'd never seen a black person before . There aren 't many , here . I can just imagine three friendly black tourists towering over this wee boy and unintentionally scaring him witless . I asked him if they were friendly , and he looked surprised , and then said , " I think so , " and looked ashamed . But what I liked about this story is that he clearly knew there was something wrong with his reaction . He felt bad about it . I also like it that he told me - it 's sort of weird , really , since I 'm also a foreigner and he is also scared of me . It felt like a confession , and also a step forward . I asked him if he would try to communicate next time , if something like that happened again , and he got an inward look on his face as he struggled to imagine it . The idea clearly scared him at the same time as it made him think very , very hard . But finally he looked up with a frightened face and whispered , " I hope . " It 's the textbook ordering season , and the textbook publishers have come out of hibernation and are performing their mating dances . I don 't know what 's up with them this year . Perhaps there 's some sort of Viagra for textbook publishers . Everywhere we go , there they are , trying to push their latest book on us and telling us how wonderful it is . It 's starting to feel like we 're being stalked . I 've even been visited by the same guy twice . He was at one university lurking in the teachers ' room after work , waiting to pounce , and then turned up a week later at a different university to disturb our lunch break . ( To be fair , it 's kind of hard to get hold of us at any other time . ) This turned out to be a good thing , I thought , since instead of sending me the text I 'd asked for , for inspection , he 'd sent the sample CD that comes with the book , which wasn 't much use to me . After complaining about this , and while I had him on the spot , I asked for one other text as well . If he didn 't want to send it out , I told him , could he at least send an inspection copy to the school ? I will not use a book I haven 't checked out first . A couple of days ago the first book I 'd asked for finally arrived , but then instead of sending me the other one I wanted he sent me a different one , which his company had already sent me a copy of with their catalogue . My colleague , who had asked for two other books , got the same one . I guess that 's their latest and greatest , and they 're trying to get us to order it . Considering that he 'd also left an inspection copy at the school and we 'd already told him it was unsuitable we weren 't very impressed . The same company , yesterday , apparently organised a lunchtime meeting at the place I was at today . I 'm glad I wasn 't there , but from what I 'm told it did have some entertaining moments . They brought along the writer of the book they 're pushing ( yes , the same one I have two copies of , which I know I won 't be using ) , and also a ' very experienced teacher ' to give us some hints about how to use the book . The writer started off badly . She told the assembled teachers ( who had been bribed with pizza ) that she knew the problems we had with motivating students , and how important it was to ' engage their interest ' and ' get them involved in their own learning . ' For this reason , she said , she had researched the target audience and included only topics they were interested in . This made this book unique , she said , and particularly suited for the Japanese university student . My colleague told me he was intrigued by the idea of a ' unique ' textbook ' particularly suited for the Japanese university student , ' and picked up the sample copy and leafed through it . He frowned , puzzled , and picked up the book he 's been using this year . Sure enough , it had exactly the same topics as the new book . And exactly the same topics as every other textbook for English learning that has been published in Japan in the last twenty years or so . Our boss , however , wasn 't quite so restrained . When the writer introduced her special guest , the man with extensive English teaching experience in Japan , who had " been teaching here for years and has a lot to offer , " the boss interrupted . " We have a lot of experience right here in this room , " he said . " How long have you been teaching in Japan ? " " Four years , eh ? " said the boss , and no doubt got that horrible little smirk he gets when he 's about to be heavily sarcastic . ( I wish he wouldn 't do that . It spoils the effect . ) Then he went around all the teachers in the room - about twenty of them - asking how long they 'd been teaching in Japan . The same company is offering free drinks to any teacher who wants to go to a particular bar in Osaka tonight , where they 'll be buying rounds and telling their captive audience all about their latest and greatest offerings . I am not there , obviously . I 'm here . Even if it wasn 't on a weeknight when I have to be up at 5 . 30 am , even the free drinks don 't predispose me to being patronised by people who haven 't researched their audience properly . The same writer and ' experienced teacher ' will be there . I didn 't get my usual let - off - steam - dinner - with - the - guys tonight , either . I turned up at the Indian restaurant , as usual , and discovered that along with four other teachers , there were three strangers ; a short dark intense - looking bloke with glasses and two younger women who looked a bit more relaxed . As I removed my raincoat , one of them pulled out a seat for me . I was a bit surprised , but assumed that they were friends of one of the other guys . However , once I was seated , the little short bloke with glasses leaned forward earnestly and said , A quick look round at the guys ' faces showed me I wasn 't the only one who didn 't have a clue what he was talking about . " What meeting ? " I asked . " I haven 't heard about any meeting , " said one of the other guys . No . They were expecting us . It turned out they were from another textbook publishing company . This lot were really serious . They had come from New York ( the women , who were British ) and London ( the guy , who was American ) to research the textbook market in Japan , and were visiting various schools and universities and setting up meetings with teachers . I still don 't know who set up this particular meeting , but we hadn 't been informed . If it was the boss , who knows we go to the curry shop after work , I will have his guts for garters tomorrow . I did , however , perform a service for teachers in Japan at this meeting . I told the researchers that we would all appreciate it very much if they would remove , from all their textbooks , that horribly unnatural question that is the bane of English teachers everywhere : " What 's your hobby ? " This question has enraged me ever since I first encountered it , and most especially since I had a peculiar fan follow me around for a while in the area where I live . He 'd pop up in the most unexpected places , and one day when I went in a coffee shop to wait for my washing to dry at the launderette he followed me into the coffee shop . He wanted to talk , and I told him I didn 't want to , so he sat at a nearby table , watching me and grinning dementedly while I tried to read my book , and wrote a letter to me , on a paper napkin . When I left he presented the letter to me . It began , " Dear Lady . Where did you invade from ? What 's your hobby ? " stopped making sense for a bit , and ended " God save the Queen ! " Today I took to work a whole bunch of travel pamphlets in English that I 've collected over the years , and had one class working out travel plans for themselves based on the information in the pamphlets . They had a ball , getting serious about organising trips that would include all the places they were interested in . After a while , one of the students called my attention to a very small photo in one of the pamphlets from Malaysia , of a pineapple plantation . Because the picture was so tiny it was hard to see anything much except a bunch of people carrying pineapples through some low - growing plants . The student asked me , " Do pineapples grow on little bushes ? " I stopped and stared at her . " No , of course they don 't ! " I said . " What a funny idea ! They grow on . . . um . . . let me see . They grow on . . . er . . . " And then I realised I didn 't have the foggiest idea how pineapples grew . The student showed me the wee picture , and I squinted at it and didn 't learn anything . I apologised for my ignorance and told her I 'd look it up later . Back in the office at lunchtime I asked some other teachers , and they all reacted pretty much the way I did . " Oh , I know this one ! They grow on , um . . . er . . . trees ! No , bushes ! No , trees ! Yes , of course - pine trees ! No wait . . . er . . . " We discussed whether we 'd ever heard of anybody being bonked on the head walking under a pineapple tree , and wondered why they were called pineapples . We decided that the answer to the first question was no , we couldn 't remember hearing of such a thing , but perhaps they don 't fall until they are squishy and harmless . To the second , we realised , after a moment 's thought , that they 're called pineapples because they look like pinecones , not because they grow on pine trees . That seemed pretty obvious . But after that we were stumped . Finally it occurred to us to consult the secretary , whose computer is hooked up to the web . I looked up " pineapple plantation " , and found this . " Eh ? " I said when the picture appeared . I don 't know how I thought pineapples grew , but that wasn 't it . I called the other teachers over and had the satisfaction of hearing them do it too . " Eh ? " One added , " But it 's standing on its head ! " Funny the things you learn when you 're teaching language . Today I learned that pineapples grow upside - down . Is this something everybody already knew except us ? I mean , it was reassuring not to have all the others pointing and laughing at me and saying , " Didn 't you know that ? Are you stupid or something ? Everybody knows that ! " - but what if all the Wednesday teachers at that school are ignorant ? Today I used the haggling game again , in my community class . This class is of older learners . The ages range from mid - thirties to mid - seventies . They are beginners , and are keen to learn . They loved the game , and proved themselves to be very good hagglers , far better than the university students the other day . They were downright tricky , in fact , and at the end of the game I felt compelled to teach them a new word . I wrote I GOT RIPPED OFF ! on the board , and waited until they 'd all noticed it . ( Some of them were still haggling , being reluctant to stop the game before closing a sale . ) When they saw the words on the board , they all started scribbling in their notebooks . I waited . Eventually one of them asked , " What does ' ripped off ' mean ? " Sometimes it 's faster to give a translation , so I dredged through my pitiful Japanese vocabulary for one . " Inchiki , I said , then mumbled to myself , " No , wait , that 's what I call The Man , that 's not it , or is it . . . ? " Then I said , " Well , it might be inchiki , or possibly damasu " " Watch out for Mrs Tapioka ! * " I said , sternly . " She ripped me off ! Do you know how much she charged me for half a Chinese cabbage ? " Little lightbulbs went off all over the place , and there was uproar as discussions erupted amongst the women over whether or not that was the going price . ( The only man , Mr Happi * , aged seventy - something , was laughing so hard he started to wheeze alarmingly and couldn 't contribute . ) I think I won in the end , although Mrs Tapioca refused to give me a refund . I will never understand why , when it comes to western design , many ordinary Japanese people seem to lose all their aesthetic judgement . They 'll get the Japanese design just right , but the western touches will be so wrong you wonder if they suddenly went blind . The reason I was thinking of this today was that I was hanging out washing , and looking out over the back where there is now a large , ugly apartment building behind us . If I lean out a little from the balcony I can almost butt my head on it . When I first came here there was an old Japanese house on that section , but it was half destroyed in the earthquake , and demolished shortly afterwards . That house behind ours was the first real Japanese home I visited in Japan . The people there kindly invited me to lunch when I first arrived . They were an ordinary middle - aged middle - class couple , with married children who had moved away . The old house had a lovely tatami - style traditional interior and a huge and gorgeous Butsudan - family altar - in the main room . To one side of the Butsudan there was a scroll depicting a misty mountain scene , which complemented perfectly the muted wall colours and the tatami . It would have been wonderful , except that on the other side of the Butsudan they 'd carefully tacked up a life - sized poster of Sylvester Stallone . Several beers later I discovered that the tiny toilet room was festooned with frilly flowers - a frilly flowered toilet seat cover , a frilly flowered toilet paper holder cover , a frilly flowered mat , etc etc . The final touch was a large soft padded plastic Mickey Mouse poster on the toilet room wall . The overall effect was ghastly , funny , and totally baffling . I think I went into culture shock right then and there , sitting on the toilet with frills tickling my bum , staring at Mickey Mouse . Still , I miss that old house , and the old neighbours . They had a traditional garden as well , with a lovely old bent and gnarled tree that we could see from our balcony . Now the people are all strangers , and from the balcony we can see a blank wall . I have come to the conclusion that my head is just too heavy . It 's all those brains in there , weighing me down . That 's why my neck hurts so much . My acupuncturist tries to tell me that it is the humidity , which has still not gone away ( it 's supposed to , tomorrow ) although the weather has become much cooler . This is meant to be one of the dry months , but it hasn 't been , so far . But I reckon it 's my brains . Clever , clever me . Also , ouch . And in case you weren 't paying attention the last time I wrote this ( if I did actually write this - I can 't remember , perhaps due to a bang on the head ) : Never , ever let yourself get a bang on the head . It messes up your neck forever . That 's my advice for the day . Avoid accidents . Also , don 't be too clever . I was too clever today , when I decided to borrow my Iranian friend 's joke . I found myself in a lift with two Americans and a Pom . ( This sounds like the beginning of a joke , doesn 't it ? It is . It 's the beginning of a failed joke . ) I hadn 't seen any of them for two weeks , so it seemed like a good opportunity . " Congratulations on your newly re - elected President ! " I said , brightly . Everybody stared at me . The silence stretched . The doors went ping ! and closed . A atmosphere of deep gloom would have descended except that we were going up , so in fact the atmosphere of deep gloom ascended . Then the Pom said , gently , " Ha ha , " said one of the Americans , heavily . They both looked infinitely depressed . The doors went ping again and we exited . The Americans stomped off , and I mentally apologised to their students . I called one of my brothers tonight , mainly because he called me yesterday when I wasn 't home and I thought there might be something urgent . There wasn 't . He just wanted to chat . He 's the sensitive and caring brother . He calls every six months or so just to make sure I 'm still alive . SCB said that he 'd checked this out . He 'd asked YB , " Have you heard from Badaunt recently ? ' , and got the nonchalant reply , ' Oh , yeah , she emailed once or twice . " " So what did she have to say for herself ? " SCB asked . " I noticed , " I said , and we giggled some more . We shared a few insulting but funny anecdotes about YB . After a while SCB had a sudden attack of conscience and said , " Ah , but he 's all right , really . We shouldn 't laugh about him like this behind his back . " " Why not ? " I asked . " Isn 't that what he 's for ? I certainly haven 't found any other use for him yet ! Besides , it 's nothing he doesn 't know . I laugh about him to his face , too . And in email . " After I got off the phone I checked to see what my last ' nothing much , just the usual ' email was about , and discovered it was one I 'd written in the middle of one of those typhoons . It 's getting pretty windy here , I 'd said . The rest of the back fence just blew away . Today I had my students role - playing a flea market game . This is always great fun , which is why I do it . We practice the language for haggling in English first , and for describing things , and then I divide the class in two , half sellers and half buyers , and set up ' stalls ' at the back of the classroom . The sellers decide what they 're selling ( we use bits of paper with pictures or words ) , and the prices they paid for those things , and then try to make a profit by selling them for more . It gets very noisy and exciting . Then the buyers and sellers swap places , and it all starts again . I berated the business class for this . " What are you thinking ? " I demanded . " You are business majors ! Twenty years from now when you guys are in charge Japan is going to collapse ! " Last week I had some students writing recipes for me . One student didn 't finish hers , and gave it to me today at the beginning of class . It was even printed , very unusual here , where most students don 't have a computer . I skimmed through it , and the following instruction caught my eye : I decided to bring the recipe home to try , but I can 't figure out how to dissolve the egg . I 'm working on it , though . Flying is next . This morning when I went to the front door to get the newspaper , I could see that the little ginger cat was sunning itself on the front doorstep again . It comes back every year in the cooler months , and uses the doormat as a sunbed . Through the frosted glass of the front door I could see that it was having a wash as I approached the door , and I knew which bit it was washing , too . One back leg was sticking straight up in the air . It was a 6 - shaped cat . I haven 't seen it since July , when I accidentally gave it a surprise . When I started unlocking the door , the cat quietly slunk off and disappeared under the gate , going around to hide behind the wall , probably thinking I would never know it had been there . I don 't think it realises we can see it from inside . I opened the door and went to the letter box to get the newspaper , and as I was coming back our two visiting turtledoves swooped over the wall and almost hit me . I ducked . They flapped up again and and did a crash landing in the tree , and from there they cocked their heads and watched me . I felt guilty because I had nothing to feed them . Usually we feed the birds in the garden by leaving birdseed on the wall under the tree . The idea was , originally , to encourage the few bulbuls and warblers we 'd seen about the place . What we actually ended up with was large numbers of extremely demanding sparrows and these two rather stupid turtledoves . Still , it 's better than nothing . We used to have no birds in our garden at all , and while it 's a very small garden , it didn 't feel like any garden at all without birds . So we continue to feed the sparrows and turtledoves . This fascinates the cat , who is apparently convinced that one day it will be able to catch one . Sometimes I see it crouched on the top of the wall , barely able to move because of the painfully spiky rose branches it 's tangled up in , and staring up into the tree hopefully , as if it thinks a bird might accidentally fly down and land in its mouth . Today , right after the turtledoves crashed the tree , two paws and a dePosted by I had arranged to meet one friend , but the arrangement was in doubt and I hadn 't been able to get in touch with her . So I emailed to say that I 'd be there , and that if she didn 't turn up never mind . I had to go to Osaka anyway , and had to eat lunch , so it might as well be at my favourite Iranian restaurant . I would take a good book , and could always chat with the manager if he wasn 't too busy . He is a funny and intelligent man . I joined them for lunch , we talked for a couple of hours , and then the other two , who had been to Koya - san and had ended up staying overnight , and had just happened to suddenly decide to visit the restaurant on their way back , said it was time for them to get home . They 'd already been gone a day longer than they 'd expected and had things to do . I decided to go as well , as it was clear that my friend wasn 't coming . But just as I was about to stand up , the other friend ( the one I 'd emailed who had said she wouldn 't have time to come ) turned up . So the first two friends left and I stayed , with the third one . While we were there a couple of guys came in , separately , both American . The manager , who is Iranian , had a running joke going . Whenever an American came in he 'd congratulate them politely and seriously on their new president . ( To understand why this was such an effective practical joke you have to understand that every single American I 've met in Japan has ended up loathing Bush , even those dyed - in - the - wool Republicans who voted for him the first time around . They are sick of feeling ashamed . He is an embarrassment to all Americans except those 52 % in America , apparently . I guess there 's a lot of news that doesn 't get covered much in the US . ) The reactions of these two guys ( and of my friend ) were really funny . They went pink and looked ready to explode , but were rendered speechless by the manager 's apparent sincerity . One of them tried to claim he was Canadian . When challenged on this he said he was Canadian in his heart , and paperwork wasn 't that important , was it ? We ended up having a sort of party , including the two American guys . I had lunch twice . Other customers came and went . Some Japanese businessmen came in briefly and had a very fast meeting at the table next to us . When I rolled a cigarette they goggled . I didn 't notice because I wasn 't looking , so it was a surprise to me when my friend started giggling . " Don 't look now , but those guys think you 're rolling a joint , " she said . " Their eyes are popping out of their heads . " ( People don 't smoke rollies here , except me . ) I sucked earnestly on my ' joint ' and offered it to my friend , who almost fell off her chair laughing . The businessmen suddenly got up and left . I apologised to the manager for giving his restaurant a reputation for being a hotbed of foreign terrorist drug addicts , and offered him a rollie in compensation , which he accepted . I told her , " I want to be able to tie my hair back off my neck on hot days , and for it to cover my neck on cold days . And I want it off my face . Aside from that , do what you like . " She grinned and took over . She asked me who cut it last time , and when . At one point , as she was lifting bits of hair and watching how they fell , she laughed and said , " I think your hair must be a real problem for most Japanese hairdressers . They wouldn 't know what to do with it . Wavy at the back , straight in the front , really fine , thick , soft . . . oh , dear . This is not Japanese hair . " She was right . My hair freaks out most Japanese hairdressers . They touch it , shriek , " Eh ? " and call their co - workers over to feel it . It 's different . I start feeling like I don 't have hair ; I have some sort of alien substance stuck to my head . My usual hairdresser , who is the daughter of my old , good hairdresser , who died , hasn 't learned as much as I 'd hoped she would . She didn 't do too badly the first couple of times , but then she started messing up badly . The last cut she gave me was a disaster slightly worse than the disaster she gave me the time before that . I 'd hoped she would get used to my hair , but she didn 't . I ended up having to get the cut ' repaired ' when I visited New Zealand in February , and the hairdresser I went to then told me she 'd done her best but basically I 'd just have to let it grow out . That 's what I 've been doing , and tying it back in the meantime . After some discussion , during which my new hairdresser said " How about . . . ? " and I said , " Whatever you think will look OK , " she gave me a sort of bob cut . I liked the way she talked about my hair , as if it was now hers , not mine . " I think I 'll grow these bits out , " she said , " So I 'll leave them for now . And I want to show the wave , so I 'll layer it a little bit here . . . " " Sounds fine to me , " I said , to everything . I 'm useless at deciding what to do with my hair . I don 't care enough , unless it 's really awful . It was really awful before , but it 's not now . She did a good job . I won 't need to wear a hat all winter after all . Today I had my students doing a quiz . There were some questions in there with words that were especially included for them to practice their pronunciation of the ' th ' sound . One of these was rather mean , when I think about it - I have trouble pronouncing it myself , especially if I 'm trying to demonstrate it . It 's OK when it just comes up in conversation , but try standing up in front of a large class and saying it loudly . Sixth is a nasty little word . You have to be careful not to spit on the students in the front row . The quiz game helps me to avoid this sort of problem , because they teach themselves . They have fun doing it , too , which is always a bonus . One exchange I overheard went like this : And there you have it - a perfect little mini - lesson in pronunciation . Perfect because my job was to sit there and not interfere while they taught each other the importance of pronouncing things understandably , and I got to have a little rest . I wish I could figure out how to do that more often . Tonight The Man and I were talking about Shosei Koda , the young Japanese man who was beheaded in Iraq . We agreed that it was stupid of him to have gone to Iraq in the first place . " Didn 't he see the news ? " I asked . " Didn 't he know how dangerous it was ? " The Man agreed . But he also said that he hoped people wouldn 't remember the guy only for that . " I hope that people remember that when we are young we always do stupid things , " he said . " We all do things that could get us killed , stupid things . We have survived our stupid things , and learned from them . He just didn 't get that chance . " " I 've read about that kind of area in China , " he told me . " And it was dangerous . Anything could have happened . Those people were outcasts . They had nothing to lose , and you were alone . " " It was very dangerous , " he told me . " I 've heard and read about it , and it was . They might have killed you . That sort of area is known to be dangerous , by local people . " " There was nothing in the guide books about it , or in the media , or in any of the books I 'd read about China before going there , " I said . " And we weren 't connected to the Internet then , so I couldn 't look it up . It wasn 't the same kind of thing as what Koda did . Everybody knows Iraq is the most dangerous place on the planet right now , for people who are white , or Korean , or Japanese , or who have any connection with the U . S . And Japan has thrown in its lot with America for this particular adventure . He knew that . " But now I wonder . At that time , in China , I 'd got lost . I had been lost for a few days . I knew which city I was in , because that was the destination of the bus . And I knew my friend was living there somewhere . But I hadn 't been able to locate her , and when I tried to call there was no answer . I was staying in a rather sleazy room in the old building of the ' Overseas Chinese Hotel ' , which was supposed to be strictly for overseas Chinese visitors , and was spending my days wandering around the town trying to locate the university where my friend was teaching . Nobody seemed to have heard of it . I hadn 't seen any non - Chinese people for at least three days . On one of my long wanderings , I 'd ended up , at night , walking down a street that was not well lit , and which got darker and darker and less populated until it was empty of people . And really , if I 'd been thinking like a sensible person I would not have continued . But I did , and then after a while I decided to turn back , but wanted to go back a different way ( having an aversion to going back the same way I 'd just come ) , so intending to go around a block and head back on a different street , I turned a dark corner into an alley to cut across the block . It was a very dark alley , and when I was well into it I was suddenly surrounded by women who came to me out of the dark , like wraiths , carrying babies and holding their hands out for money , or perhaps for food . They surrounded me so I couldn 't move . When I indicated that I didn 't have money on me ( which I didn 't - I was carrying only enough to get me back to my hotel if I got lost and needed a taxi , supposing I could find a taxi ) , they thrust their babies at me , saying something I couldn 't understand . I could only understand that they were desperate and wanted me to do something for them . When somebody holds a baby out to you , you automatically stretch out your arms to take it . I started to do this , and then something stopped me , and I held back . I suddenly knew that if I took a baby the women would disappear . My arms ached to take them , but I didn 't . The women were pleading and almost ( but not quite ) threatening . It was as if they had so little hope they didn 't even have the energy to threaten . It was both sad and frightening . The women and the babies were very thin and dirty , dressed in rags , and the babies were terrifyingly silent . They should have been crying and distressed but instead they were painfully quiet and still , huge eyes in the gloom , sores on their hairless heads and faces , gazing at me blankly . They weren 't really babies , I realised . They were stunted toddlers . They were beautiful , even with their sores and thin faces and huge staring eyes . They were luminous and pathetic in the darkness . There was nothing I could do . I had to walk away . It was terrible , walking away . I stroked the babies ' faces , and apologized to their mothers in a language they couldn 't understand , and walked away , leaving them there . They parted for me so I could go . I didn 't feel it was dangerous , but I did feel it was an awful thing to do , to walk away like that , and I hated myself for it . There were just too many of them , and I couldn 't help them all . If there had been just one woman and her baby , who knows what I might have done , or tried to do , to help them ? But there were at least a dozen . I originally told The Man there were twenty or so , but I think there were probably fewer . It just seemed like more . He said , " You don 't know that . You said it was dark . Maybe the men were waiting in the shadows . Maybe you just got lucky . Maybe you did something right by mistake , and they spared you . But my point is that if you 'd been kidnapped , or killed , or hurt , people would have said , ' What was she doing there ? Why was she in such a dark and dangerous area ? ' And even though nobody knew of it before , they 'd all know about it now , and would think you 'd been stupid . " Yes , the guy who went to Iraq was stupid , and he didn 't think , but we all do stupid things and don 't think , sometimes . And we learn . He didn 't get the chance to learn . " I guess The Man is right . But I 'm still distracted by the idea that I did something so dangerous . That hadn 't occurred to me . I didn 't know , even after it was all over , that the area I went to was dangerous . I still find it hard to believe . But I do remember feeling scared , and I wonder why . I 'd always thought it was just the shock , and the thought that these women were so far outside society that they weren 't even mentioned in guidebooks , or in books about China . I didn 't know who they were . They didn 't fit any picture I had of China . They were not ' official ' people , so I didn 't know they existed . Nobody knew . They were invisible to the ' real ' world . I was naive . I thought that anything that wasn 't in the guide books or in the news didn 't exist . If it wasn 't written , it wasn 't there . How silly is that ? The Japanese guy was naive , too . He thought , " Well , I 'm not a political person , I 'm not trying to change anything , I am not representing Japan , I am just an individual who wants to know what is really going on . I 'm just curious . People will see I am innocent , and they won 't hurt me . " And he thought , as we always do , But innocence doesn 't work like that . We are all symbols of something , whether we like it or not . I am a symbol of the rich , white world . I don 't like it , but that 's what I am . I am clean , well - fed , healthy and white . To those women I must have been unimaginably rich . Koda was rich , dressed in the clothing of the enemy , had a visa stamp for Israel in his passport , and he represented Japan , whether he liked it or not , and whether he knew it or not . I still don 't know whether being in that place at night was dangerous for me . The Man might be wrong about that . But it could have been , easily . And if I 'd died , people would probably have thought I was stupid . I could have been comfortably at home in my safe little New Zealand , across the other side of the world . If I 'd been hurt I would have become a person who had everything and threw it away for personal thrills and ' fun ' . I didn 't have to be there in a dark unknown alley in a Chinese town at night , alone . I was asking for it . It was a smaller scale stupidity than the Japanese guy , but really , it was based on the same foolish impulse , or wrong instinct . The same thought of it won 't happen to me . The difference is that I survived . Posted by |
We got a white Christmas ! It actually started snowing on Christmas Eve . I had to work that day , but we weren 't as busy as some previous years and the boss let me leave early . I got to have Christmas Eve afternoon with my family . I made sweet rolls for the next morning 's breakfast , watched a little TV , played with my new Flip camera , fixed some supper , drove around town with my husband and kids and looked at Christmas lights , and even watched Prep and Landing , all together . It was the perfect afternoon . And then to get up on Christmas morning to fresh , clean snow ! Usually , if we have a " white " Christmas , it 's left over from a previous snow . Or maybe some flurries floating around . This was real Christmas snow ! Christmas was sitting around the tree , watching each other open our gifts , breakfast here , too much dinner at Mom 's with extended family , then home in the evening . It was a good day . Fat Cat found himself a good spot under the Christmas tree ! I remember as a child laying under the tree and looking up through the branches at the lights . I miss having the time to do that ! Everything is hustle and bustle . I called Mom last night and we went to Walmart and stopped and got something to eat . I didn 't really need anything , but it was a chance to spend some time with just her . With Dad gone and my brother and his family living 4 states away , the Holidays are just a little melancholy . I have a great step - family , and my step - brother and his daughter are coming for Christmas dinner , but it 's just not quite the same . Today is going to be one of those nutty days at work . Every Christmas Eve the boss has everyone come in . We will have more help than we actually need . It 's fun and tedious at the same time ! We have a pot - luck dinner and people pop in and out just to visit . The boss starts indulging in a little Holiday Spirit early in the afternoon . We close early ( we close at 4 every year , but they can 't seem to remember that from year to year ) and some of the grown - ups stay and share a drink and see how many times the phone rings to see if we are still open . Usually I do , but I think today I 'm coming home to be with my family . Right now , I 'm just hoping for a little snow this afternoon ! Merry Christmas , everyone ! My maniacal urge to bake cookies in December was just as strong this year as it always has been . I 've spent the last 4 weeks baking , baking , baking . I have a freezer full of cookies . I 'll give some away , but we 'll be eating Christmas cookies into February ! I 've told myself " enough " but I 'm still mentally planning what to bake next . The madness has to stop ! I just wish my Holiday urges were the worst of my problems right now . We 've having some trouble getting my daughter 's financial aid worked out ( that can wait until after Christmas , I think ) . And the IRS has just notified us that my son 's taxes were figured wrong and he owes almost $ 700 . This can 't wait . I 'm pretty sure it 's wrong . It all has to do with a small trust fund my Mom set up that got rolled over into another account last year . My guess is something got inputted wrong somewhere down the line and I 'll be pulling out my hair ( what little I have ) trying to straighten it all out . I 'm going to spend my whole week on this instead of enjoying the last week of Christmas . I get so tired of the hassle that seems to go with everything any more ! I had a wild week at the store . We actually got some snow over the course of the week , but unfortunately it was accompanied by ice . Whenever there is a threat of bad weather , everyone comes running in to " stock up " as if we are going to get snowed in for 2 weeks . It 's been years since it was more than 2 days ! Tuesday is our Senior Citizen day , so it 's always our busiest day anyway , but add in bad weather and it becomes hectic . Plus , to make the day more fun , one of our registers went down for about two hours . Understand , we only have two registers on the best of days . ( It 's a small store . ) One register , lines of people . Hence , loads of fun . ( sarcasm , in case you missed that ! ) Fortunately , everyone was very understanding . That 's not always the case . Wednesday , somehow we just got behind , then the other day girl went to do deliveries , and was gone half the day . ( I think she only had two deliveries but the Pepsi delivery guy parked her in . ) Then , on Thursday and Friday , she couldn 't make it in because she lives about 10 miles out and the Blacktop was one big stretch of black ice . Therefore , I got to do my work , her work , and even a little extra , just for the fun of it and because one of the owners had a doctor 's appointment . My bad foot has had too much of a work - out , and I think I re - injured my knee . I 'm feeling old . Next week , Christmas week , should be just as fun , maybe even more so ! Thank goodness , I actually do enjoy the hustle and bustle ! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The husband had to work 5 to 9 this morning , so I rode over with him and went shopping with the goal of finishing my Christmas shopping . It 's rather nice when there isn 't many people in the stores ! I went to Walmart at 6 and parked up front . Then I wondered around for awhile . Picked up a few things , checked out with no lines . But I had to go back at 9 because the photo department wasn 't open and I had my mother - in - law 's present to pick up . In the two hours from when I left to when I came back was like night and day ! The parking lot was full and the linesPosted by I have a doctor 's appointment this morning . I sooo don 't want to go . It 's just my blood - pressure medicine prescription check , but it 'll probably cost $ 100 . I used to be able to go once a year , get my pap and the whole fun thing and then just go in at 6 months , get my blood pressure checked by the nurse , and they renewed my prescription . Not any more . No , now I have to see the doctor . So they can charge more . I know that 's the whole thing . It sucks . And since I have a $ 5000 deductible on my insurance , it all comes out of my pocket . Money I really would rather use for something else - - like heat . It 's a whole 13 degrees outside right now , and we have our heat set on 65 , just so we can keep the bill down . I 've been feeling really old lately , lots of aches and pains , light - headed and constant heartburn . But what 's the point of telling her that - - she 'll suggest tests that I can 't afford . Plus , I should say something to her about my foot from when I fell at work two weeks ago . But again , even if the store 's insurance would pay for it , I just don 't want to go to the hospital and go through the whole rig - a - ma - role for x - rays . Oh God , I am not looking forward to this day . Life has been incredibly hectic the last couple of weeks , and is going to get only more so for the next month . I love it , and every year I think I will get a jump on things and have things half done before December even gets here . I used to , when the kids were younger and I was only working part time . Now , not so much ! My daughter turned 21 a few weeks ago , and since she doesn 't drink , she wanted to invite some of her friends from Indianapolis and some of her high school friends for the weekend and go to St . Louis to the Zoo . Only problem , we don 't have enough room in our house to have a dozen girls staying the night . But my Mom does ! Since my Step - dad was going to be gone for the weekend ( hunting season ) she said " sure , bring them out ! " She has a big walk - out basement with two bedrooms and a full bath , so the girls camped out down there and I took one of the bed - rooms upstairs . We had a perfect day - - overcast but not cold , small crowd . And the animals were all out . My daughter is majoring in animation , so her friends are all " artsy " . Very diverse bunch of girls ! I always enjoy being with them . She 's planning on moving to San Francisco in January to finish school . I 've gotten used to her being home , it 's going to be hard to let her go - - again . After Dad died , Mom decided to sell everything and move - - get a fresh start . At that time she gave me all of her records , including her Christmas albums . Just like how some smells remind us of a certain time or place , these albums take me back to Christmas as a kid . To be perfectly honest , I bought the stereo just so I could play and record these . I 'm probably going to drive my family crazy this year ! Aack ! My feet hurt ! One of the local youth groups hosted their annual Holiday Bazaar today and I had a booth . Even though I am used to being on my feet all day , I wore boots with a bit of a heal and it was a bit much for my old - lady feet ! They usually do the Bazaar on Saturday , but this year decided to give it a try on Sunday . The first year they did it , it was on Sunday and the turn - out wasn 't great . Everyone goes to Church , then home to dinner . And few people from other Churches seem to make it on Sunday . This is the Bible belt , after all . Small town , so 5 Churches for every bar ! And altho I think Christians are essentially the same religion , they sure are cliquey ! I really think I had better results when it was done on Saturday . I know different things need to be tried to keep it " fresh " , but I hope they go back to Saturday next year . This is usually my biggest event I do each year and I don 't have anything else lined up before Christmas . I usually do an Open House , but I may not even do that . I think I 'm losing interest . Or maybe it 's just time to try something new . Maybe I need something " fresh " ! I just spent the last week in Cheyenne , Wyoming . My brother retired after 24 years with the Air Force and we went to attend the ceremony . My brother is well liked and has accomplished much during his time . He served 3 terms over - seas , two during hostilities . Stories he will probably never tell us . I 'm very proud of him . He was a bit of a screw - up before he went into the military . It made him into a better man then he maybe would have been . He has a wife , three daughters , one grandson . His men think the world of him . I guess it is tradition for a retiree to receive a shadow box , but his men made him a shadow box pub - table . It 's quite impressive . The flag in the center was presented to my Mom when Dad died and she gave it to my brother . The patches at the bottom are also from Dad 's uniform . It made the box even more special . But this morning , on Facebook , he commented he is already bored ! He 's looking for a new job , and it 'll happen for him . In the mean time , he has to adjust to being " Mr . " instead of " Sergeant " . He 's been in the military since he was 18 . It 's going to be a whole new world for him ! I 'm heading to Wyoming tomorrow , right after we get done voting and the folks drop off their animals at the pet motel . My " little " brother is retiring from the Air Force and the ceremony is Friday . It 's about a 15 hour drive , but we always try to go out for the important things . I think he 's a bit nervous about becoming a civilian . He 's been in the service for 24 years , since he was 18 , and it 's going to be a big change for him and his family . We didn 't get along very well when we were young , but now we are good friends . I 'm proud of him , and can 't wait to see him ! We 've got possums . My husband puts cat food out for the older cats . Last winter they both stayed in the house most of the time and I really wanted to keep feeding them inside but come Spring , he started feeding them outside . Our oldest cat is real skiddish and she had gotten over some of that , so my theory was if we kept her coming in to eat , she wouldn 't act so nervous all of the time . But he started feeding her outside and now she won 't come back in or let me pet her . We had noticed that we were going through cat food twice as fast , and I imagined that we were feeding ever wild cat in the neighborhood . But the last couple of weeks , since it started getting dark so much earlier , we 've walked out and found one or two possums getting their fill . I don 't really mind the possums - - they fit in nicely with the bats , rabbits and raccoons . But I really don 't want to feed ' em ! Rosco , one of our in - door cats , decided he wanted to be an out - door cat . We were having problems with him not using the litterbox and making messes where ever he felt it was convenient . When that place was one of my plants , I grabbed him mid - poop and threw him outside on the grass . He freaked ! It would have been funny if I hadn 't been so irritated at the moment . But then he started trying to get out - - so one day I grabbed an old dog leash and put him outside . He loves it ! I don 't want him wandering the neighborhood , so we have continued with the leash . He 's just like a dog - - we open the door first thing in the morning and he runs right out to his spot . It 's the funniest thing ! On the bright side , knock on wood , there hasn 't been any more messes on my carpet ! I just made my first pumpkin pie of the season ! We love it - - I don 't know why I don 't make pumpkin in the Spring and Summer , except the pumpkin shortage the last year probably affected my recent pie choices . We got a half - pallet of canned pumpkin in the store yesterday , tho , so I think I 'm good for awhile ! It seems like just last week I was wondering if the leaves were ever going to start turning color , and almost over night they did ! It 's been strange weather - - extreme hot , then sudden cold with frost , then hot again , and now we are at just about perfect ! Illinois weather bounces around so much , you never know what you are going to get from day to day . We always say , if you don 't like it today , wait until tomorrow ! The farmers have been crazy at work - - I think most of the fields are in . Corn , anyway . Because of the Spring rain , some of the beans got out late . But , I still think they are ahead of schedule . You know you live in an agricultural area when weather isn 't just something to talk about to fill in those ackward silent spots ! I can 't seem to stay mad . Most of the time I think that is a good thing , but sometimes I think it 's why I never seem to get any where with my life . I get mad at work and decide I have to find another job , but then I get over it and it 's just easier to stay where I am . Twenty excuses to stay - - it 's flexible , I can get off any time I want to , I like the people , on and on . But it 's minimum wage and there is no future there . If I knew that in five years I could have the position I want I wouldn 't even consider leaving . But the woman that does it is in her early 60s and will probably stay until she 's in her 80s ! By then , I hope I 'm about ready to retire myself . Unfortunately , the job market sucks here . I 've got a job interview tomorrow for a job that I think I could really like , but it 's only 20 hours a week . It actually comes with benefits , but with my husband not working right now , I 'll probably still have to work part time else where . Probably at the grocery store . I don 't think that will make my life less stressful ! They will probably be interviewing 2 dozen people , so maybe the whole quandary is moot ! My folks have a nice spread out in the country and several years ago we started having a hog roast on the Saturday before Labor Day . It 's been a learning experience , but the guys pretty well have it down to a science now . The actual party starts on Friday night . My stepdad 's nephew brings down his backhoe and digs a 5 or 6 foot hole during the afternoon , and we fill the hole with wood and start burning it . We add wood for several hours until we have a couple of feet of coals . I usually leave before it 's done enough because sometimes it 's midnight before they decide it 's burned down enough and I still have to get up the next morning and cook ! ( Plus , they start passing the shots and my stepbrothers won 't let me say no . I don 't drink much anymore and I honestly don 't want to start my next morning praying to the porcelain god ! ) They wrap the meat in cheese cloth , put it in aluminum pans and wrap it in wet burlap bags . They then wrap heavy wire around each bundle so they can lower and raise it out of the pit . They didn 't think to do that the first year , and it was tricky getting it out ! Live and learn ! They put a piece of tin down on the coals and set the prepared meat down in the hole . A few more pieces of tin go across the top and then they shovel dirt over that to hold in the heat . We leave it like that until about 4 o ' clock the next afternoon . The next afternoon starts with a trap - shoot . I 'll say upfront I don 't much like guns so I usually don 't go out until later in the afternoon . I will admit , however , there are some truly skilled shooters in the family and I enjoy the competitiveness of the event . These are people who take this all very seriously and have some really expensive equipment . It 's a bit beyond me . Eventually , they decide it 's time to open the pit . Everyone crosses their fingers that there is still heat and the meat is done . I don 't know why everyone worries , we 've never had a bad bake yet ! We all stand around during the " unveiling " and sample the meat as each package gets opened . It 's so hot it burns your fingers , but it just doesn 't seem as good once it starts to cool . It literally falls off the bone . I usually get my fill of the meat then , and when it comes time for the meal , I eat the salads and desserts that everyone has brought ! Sooo much food ! But so good ! This year saw the biggest crowd I think we 've ever had . I left a little after 9 and headed home , but I 'm sure the party went on till way after midnight . I 'm just not the partier I used to be - - but it 's all such a good time ! Several years ago we noticed bat houses at the zoo . My husband found a pattern for them and built one and put it on the garage . Further research said it could take 4 or 5 years to actually attract bats . I think it 's probably been 7 and I had given up . But I noticed droppings this week and upon further investigation it looks like we have three ! I 'm guessing that losing a big part of the tree that is between the house and the garage is the reason we finally have bats . I imagine the tree was simply in the way . Too cool ! The garden , the little bit I had , produced a goodly amount of zucchini . ( Still is , actually ! ) So last Sunday I shredded up several to make bread . The plan was that I would make a different flavored batch each evening after work . Which didn 't happen ! Surprisingly , it hadn 't soured so early this morning I had a zucchini bread making marathon . I have found throughout the years that Christmas isn 't Christmas for me unless it includes lots of baking . And somehow , now I can 't seem to get motivated to do a large amount of baking without Christmas music ! ( We all have our little eccentricities ! ) . My daughter got up mid - morning and walked in and just stood and stared at me . Finally she said " Christmas music ? I could hear it in the bathroom . I knew you were baking " , and walked out . They know me so well ! A guy I used to party with a thousand years ago ( before the husband and kids ) comes into the store quite often . The other day during the course of our conversation he made a reference to " secrets " , more than once . I think I know what secrets he is referring to ( again , before the husband and the kids ! ) , altho I 'm not sure why . But like I said to him , this is a small town - - there are no secrets ! The thing I find so funny about this is - - again , it 's a small town . Many of us have a " past " that we don 't talk about anymore . Maybe pretend it didn 't even happen . But come on , folks , true secrets are hard to find . Someone was there and remembers , even if we pretend we don 't ! I 'm probably not explaining this right , but I just find it so funny to wait on certain customers and make small talk with them , act like we are casual acquaintances when we used to know each other quite well ! It 's just so hilarious ! I 'm going to start a new game - - Kick the Computer ! I 'm talking about the one we have at work . Three years ago we got a new register system at the grocery store . At the time , I and the other full - time " day checker " had our doubts about the system . It is a flat screen with lots of " buttons " that one pushes to get to other screens . We had very little training - - basically we just had to figure it out ourselves . I asked the tech that installed it for a manual and his response was " the manual is 600 pages long and no one reads it " . In other words , we received no manual . I believe we were the first store that said computer expert installed and it has been buggy as hell . We have had trouble after trouble with it for the whole three years . And this week has been a bad one . I 'm sure the owners spent a lot of money on the system and we are stuck with it for years to come , but oh , it is so frustrating ! My cousin 's husband has been fighting cancer for a couple of years and it looks like he is going to lose his battle now . I hurt for her so much . This is her second marriage , and I think he is her " soul mate " . So many of us never find that . We find someone to love , someone we marry and raise children with . But that doesn 't mean they are our soul mate . I think there are actually just a lucky few who find that . At this point he has hung on longer than they thought he would Monday morning . I hate this waiting . But , she has a chance to say good - bye . I know that may sound a bit morbid , but early this morning my step - cousin and her friend were shot by a 15 year old that broke into their house . I 'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it . I just saw them a few weeks ago . We had a fish - fry at my folks ' and they were there . And now they are gone . Poof . No one got a chance to say good - bye or " I love you " . I 'm just so sad for everyone . She had her Mom and sisters and nieces and nephews , Aunts and Uncles and countless cousins . He had his kids and grandkids . My step - dad 's family have always just treated me like I was one of them - - wonderful people . I think I 'm in shock a little bit . Bad week . It 's Fair time ! Our town hosts one of the bigger County Fairs in Southern Illinois and it 's a " big deal " around here . We have a very nice fairground and there are lots of activities that will go on all week . I remember as a child getting so excited when the fair came . My parents would take us out for corn - dogs and cotton candy and we would get to spend money on the rides and games . The sad part was the Fair meant the summer was almost over . Now , as an adult , I just get excited about the Elephant Ears ! The last couple of weeks have been hectic - - one thing after another - - so it was nice to take a break and get my yearly fair - food fix ! My world is falling apart right now , by which I mean that I have so much to take care of that I 'm becoming paralyzed . The list is so long that I don 't know what to do first . This isn 't the first time this has happened , and what normally happens is I will do whatever has to be done in the next day or two as each thing comes due , and eventually I should work through it all . It always works out , but this time feels worse for some reason . I think my nerves are so frayed at this point that my mind has quit working . I keep screwing up at work . Not good . I 've suffered from depression in the past and a few years back I started having panic attacks so bad I could hardly leave the house . I ended up on medication for a few years . I don 't want to end up back there again . I know time takes care of things , but I just don 't want to have to wade through it . I would prefer just to pass by it ! Do you think if I just ignore it all , it will go away ! ? I bought our house at auction 11 years ago . It 's a big house , 10 rooms , 3 full bathrooms , nice sized utility room , and a mudroom . Plus a double lot with two garages . It was an older house that had been added onto in 1995 . It was a spur of the moment thing , the buying of the house . And right now I can 't afford it . The utilities are high , and alot of the remodeling was apparently done by amateurs . We had to have the plumbers come this week to run a snake to the sewer , except there was no clean - out , and they couldn 't find where the line left the house . It turned into an all - day thing . $ 500 and a torn up flower bed later our drains work and we have a clean - out , but I suspect this is only the beginning . Things are probably going to start falling apart . Part of me knows we need to unload it , but the other part of me really likes it here and wants to stay . I 've been planting stuff since we first moved in and I don 't want to leave my plants ! The food producers , like the rhubarb , gooseberries and asparagus , are just now really going strong . If we move , I 'll have to start all over ! And what if the new owners don 't want to mess with it and dig it all up ? Oh , the horror ! I think it would physically hurt me ! Plus , there is my burning bush , butterfly bush , peonies , lilies , iris beds and other miscellaneous plants . I 'm hoping the money problem resolves itself soon and I can stay here . In the mean time , I 'm just glad I don 't have to go to the laundromat any more ! A friend had mentioned " three sisters " on facebook and being curious , I looked it up . Turns out it refers to an Indian method of gardening . Our garden spot is small and in a low spot - - not the best location . Last year we had so much standing water I didn 't mess with it at all - - I just let the sunflowers take over . This year , after I had read about the three sisters , I decided to give it a try . Unfortunately , we again had a wet spring and I began to suspect there would be no garden this summer , either . But I got stubborn . At several different points I was tilling and planting in the rain . And I had to modify what I read to my circumstances . Then it rained and rained some more . The plants started growing , but half the time my garden had standing water . When we got back from vacation , it appeared that there was more weeds than plants . My husband said to just forget it , but again I got stubborn and started hoeing and tilling and found there was more plants than at first believed . A bit yellow , yes , and the tomato plants are a bit scrawny , but my hard work paid off . Everything is turning green and is growing . I 've replanted a few things , so fingers crossed , I 'll get some beans yet ! Even the neighbor 's cat , Oreo , likes it ! Well , the garden just might survive , after all . I guess the rain continued while we were gone , and when we got home after being gone for almost two weeks , there was more weeds than plants . My garden is in a low spot , so after a rain there tends to be standing water , at least on half the spot . But there wasn 't any standing water when we got home . Yesterday I took the hoe out and worked around all of the plants and this morning I took the tiller and went down the rows and between the plants . It looks like most of the corn made it , but not many of the beans . I 'll have to replant . At least one of the zucchini made it , and some other vining plants - - cucumber , pumpkins . The eggplant is a no - show . And the tomatoes are hanging on . Every thing is a bit yellow , which shows they have been in water recently , but hopefully they will green up now - - if the heavy rains can stay away ! We have cats . Two outside , two inside . Mom checked on the outdoor cats while we were gone , made sure they had enough food . We boarded the inside cats . And came home to fleas . We 've never had trouble with fleas in this house before , but I guess last year was a great year for the critters , and we have fought them all winter long . I thought we had them taken care of , but I guess not . Syd and I both apparently have sweet skin , because we both got bitten immediately . The guys haven 't had a single bite . It 's so not fair ! So we fogged the house yesterday and I 'll Frontline everyone again . Uugh ! We went to see Toy Story 3 yesterday ( while the foggers were doing their thing ) . Good movie ! ( I got teary at the end . ) I think Toy Story was the first movie we took the kids to . We saw it in 2 - D and I think it was a good call . We saved $ 8 . 00 and I don 't think we missed anything . I went and saw Avatar three times , and I think the 3 - D enhanced that movie , but we 've seen the latest Shrek movie and Alice in Wonderland in 3 - D and think both movies would have been just as good in 2 - D . I 'm hoping this whole 3 - D thing is a fad . We just got back from Florida . I 've been planning this trip for two years , but for various reasons , ( both related to my husband 's job situations ) we weren 't able to go . This year I said we were going , no matter what ! This was our second time going as a family to Walt Disney World . What can I say - - I love it there ! We stayed at the All - Star Movie Resort this time - - last time was Century Pop . Altho the resorts are similar in most ways , we will stay at Century Pop next time just because there is three All - Star resorts and they share buses . We stayed 7 nights with 6 days of park tickets , plus we went to see Cirque du Soleil . It 's expensive , but if you ever get a chance , see the Cirque du Soleil . It is amazing ! My 18 year - old son said that was his favorite part this time . He even bought the CD , and he isn 't a big music person . I was able to get in on a special WDW was running where we got the Meal Plan for free . The meal plan allows two ( express ) meals and two snacks a day per person . We took extra snacks with us just because we were afraid that the Meal Plan wouldn 't be enough and we would get hungry , but we shouldn 't have worried . Last time we went , we took breakfast stuff and sandwich stuff that we ate for lunch , and bought food in the parks for supper . We bought the cheapest stuff we could and shared alot , so I guess that 's why we thought the meals and snacks would be a bit small . It was so much food , we didn 't even use it all ! The morning we left , we went to the food court and loaded up on snacks and sandwiches and salads . We ended up with enough stuff to cover two meals on the drive home ! So , yes , I definitely recommend the Meal Plan ! The only thing that put a bit of a damper on the trip was the fact that I guess my age is starting to catch up with me . My ankles swelled so bad and that 's something new that I didn 't expect . We all expect those panicked late - night calls from our kids when they are in their teens about car trouble . Even I had to call my folks to come pull me out of the mud two Christmas ' ago . Yesterday was my daughter 's official moving home day . I knew she would have a lot to finish packing and I knew she was going to have a rough time separating from her roommates , one especially - they 've been joined at the hip for more than the last year and a half . But I really thought she would head home by mid - afternoon . The drive between here and Indianapolis , where she has been attending school , is almost three hours long . The fact that she drives a 15 year old Escort has never bothered me much , but for some reason I had a bad feeling this time . Not unfounded , as it turns out . The RA that was supposed to inspect the apartment didn 't get there until ( very ) late afternoon , so by the time she finished packing and got something to eat , it was almost dark . Half way home , just west of Terre Haute , her tire blew out . Thank goodness , she had just gotten to the rest area . She pulled over and called us . While I was " discussing " options with my husband , she was " Mom , I 'm all freaked - out here ! " I told her to unpack the trunk , get out the spare , and look helpless . Maybe someone would take pity on her . In the mean time , we would head her way . Well , my plan worked . A nice trucker helped her get the tire changed . We had only gone approximately 20 miles when she called so we turned around and headed home , and she finally made it , safe and sound . It 's nice to know there are still plenty of good people out there ! We are heading to Florida to Walt Disney World in two days . We went as a family 4 years ago and it was one of the best times I 've ever had . I had promised the kids two years ago that we would go back , and I 've been planning this for the last 6 months . For the last month I 've had flash - backs of the Haunted Mansion , and I 've caught myself the last week or so taking deep breaths as if I am breathing in the Florida air . Anticipation , I guess ! We have reservations for 7 nights at the resort , 6 days in the parks . I am so ready to go ! For quite a few years our summers here in Central Illinois were hot and dry . We were actually in severe draught for several years . But for some reason the last few years have been totally opposite . We have had such wet Springs that the farmers have had a rough time getting their crops into the ground . And if you have noticed a canned pumpkin shortage , it 's because the ground was so wet last Fall that , altho there was a decent crop , no one could get out to bring them in and they rotted on the ground ! This year hasn 't been quite as bad as last year , but it took me forever to get my garden planted , and now it 's been so wet I haven 't been able to hoe . At this point I have more weeds than plants , so there may not be much of a crop this fall . To top it all off , we have had some pretty strong storms move through and the one that passed us on Tuesday had a little tornado action going with it . There is a " mound " outside town that seems to divert actual tornadoes around us , but occasionally we get some damage . This time it was our turn ! My poor Bradford Pear took a hit . The gooseberry bush got smashed a bit , but otherwise we were lucky . Our neighbor down the block - - not so much . A huge limb fell on his garage and car . I haven 't heard how the dog is . The previous owners of our house had off - white carpet in every room . Every ! Room ! That 's just wrong . Carpet should not be in bathrooms , mudrooms and kitchens , and especially not off - white carpet ! We tore up the rugs in the bathrooms several years ago , but we just recently replaced the carpet in the kitchen with linoleum tiles . A little extra glue and the weight of the encyclopedia made sure they are good and flat ! I think we have used my encyclopedia to hold things down more often than to look things up ! The daughter is moving home in two weeks . After almost two years away at school , she is taking a break . She and her roommate have both decided they have gotten all they can from the school they have been attending and are going to look into other options . In the mean time , she is moving back with us . It 's going to be an adjustment ! I think more so for her than for us because she has spent the last two years in Indianapolis , where there is plenty to do . There just really isn 't much to do in our little town . ( Maybe that will be her incentive to find a school quickly ! ) She came home several weeks ago and brought a car load of stuff . We met her in Terre Haute today , which is half way between here and there , and brought home another car load . I was hoping she could get the rest of it home in one more load , but she didn 't sound confident that she can do that , so we will probably make another trip next weekend and do it again . I 'm just wondering where we are going to store all of her stuff ! It 's amazing what one can accumulate in 2 years ! I 've spent so much time the last month getting ready for our town 's first Homecoming , I haven 't had much time to devote to other things , including this ! A huge amount of time has gone into Life in Altamont , my blog about my home town , hoping to " reintroduce " people that have been away for a number of years . It 's amazing to me how much our little town has changed in the last twenty - five years . When you see it every day , you don 't notice it so much . I think I had kind of quit looking . But as I went around and took pictures and talked to people , I was rather amazed ! My goal was to do one entry every day in May and it turned into more work than I ever thought it would be - - partly because it kept raining and I had a hard time getting pictures ! Somehow , I succeeded . Although it won 't be a daily thing now , I plan on continuing . Hopefully , I can do one entry a week . There is still so much I missed ! Who would have thought there was so much in this little town ! One of the first things I ever bought when I got old enough to start baby - sitting was a record player . Not just a record player , no , this was one that played cassettes and 8 - tracks , also ! I thought it was a beautiful thing ! I 've had several different stereo systems since that first one and they have always included a turn - table . But about a year - and - a - half ago my stereo died . Although I had kept my eyes open for a new one , I didn 't have much luck . Then I heard the great stereo gods had created a stereo that would actually record vinyl to CD . Oh , life was good ! So many of my albums have gotten scratched and warped over the years - - basically I believed they were just good for framing and hanging on the wall ! But several months before Christmas I saw a picture of this stereo in the Kohl 's ad and KNEW that was the one ! So of course , every time it was in the flyer , I ran over - - and they had none . Zip . Nadda . The last time it was in the ad I decided I would check one more time and then head North to the next nearest Kohl 's . Which is about 90 miles . I know , crazy . But I get obsessed with things . The stereo gods smiled on me that day , however , and there was amazingly several on the shelf ! I love the little pops and crinkles an album makes , unlike the smoothness of something digital . And it 's been amazing - - so far most of my albums have played without any skips or warps ! Rainy day today , and outside activities are limited ! So I pulled out this recipe for Chocolate Mousse Torte I got off a nilla wafer box that I 've been wanting to try . I had even bought the ingredients weeks ago , but hadn 't taken the time . It was a hit - - even my son , who isn 't a fan of cream cheese , liked it . Yeah ! I 'm one of those people who pull pages out of my magazines because I want to try the recipe , but then they never get made . I decided I was going to start trying some of them . According to my husband , tho , the problem is I make something , it tastes great , and then I never make it again . My filing system leaves something to be desired ! Maybe , someday , I 'll be organized ! A few years ago I discovered The Dresden Files - - a series written by Jim Butcher about a Chicago Detective who just happens to also be a wizard . I love , love , love the books and was ecstatic a couple of years back when I heard it was to be made into a TV series for Syfy Channel . Like most everything I love on TV , it was short lived . ( My husband was sure the reintroduced Dr . Who was doomed ! ) But a " thank you " goes to Mr . Butcher - - he continues to publish new stories and I can honestly say I haven 't been disappointed yet . I just got his latest edition , " Changes " and it 's been a happy week ! I 'll probably finish it tonight or in the morning , and it 's always a bit sad getting to the end ! Hopefully , another adventure will be forthcoming ! I like to bake . Usually , come Fall , I start baking like mad . By Spring that falls away a bit . But lately I 've gotten the bug again . Mainly , I 've been baking cookies , but the rhubarb was ready , so I spent part of my Sunday baking a rhubarb pie . I add a diced apple to cut some of the tartness ( and the icky feeling my teeth get ! ) , so technically , it 's rhubarb / apple pie ! I know you can 't tell from a picture , but I think this was one of the best pies I 've ever baked - - and my husband agreed . This from my biggest pie fan ! The Rhubarb crop is looking pretty good this year - - I see lots of pies in our future ! Everyone should have a favorite Aunt ! My mom has a big family and I have lots of aunts , uncles and cousins . But there is one aunt that was always there - - kind of my " mom away from mom " aunt . I often would spend a week or two with her during summer vacations . And I 've always felt like I could tell her things that I couldn 't tell Mom . With the recent marital situation that I find myself in she was the one to turn to . Not just because of our connection , but because her life situation matches mine more than it does my mom 's . So I headed up to see her yesterday . The temperature had dropped about 20 degrees from last week 's record highs and the sun was shining , so the hour and a half drive was extremely pleasant . We talked , laughed , went out to lunch . It was all very therapeutic ! I 'm not sure I 'm any closer to making a decision , but I feel better / clearer about the decision I have to make . I really thought by this time in my life everything would be settled for my future - - and here I am on the tip of the mountain wondering which way to get down ! I wish that made me feel like I was King of the Hill instead of free - falling ! Yeah , they got me in to see the doctor yesterday afternoon and she gave me a bunch of pills to take . Which seem to be working quickly . Another yeah ! But she told me not to go to work today . I hate using a sick day when I don 't feel sick , and I thought about going anyway . But she told me to wear loose clothes today and I can 't do that at work , so I stayed home . Now , to find some constructive way to use my day . Cleaning and sorting , I suppose . I 'd really like to have a yard sale soon . Maybe this is the boost I need to make it happen ! Two weeks ago I had a tooth pulled . The cap had popped off and taken part of the tooth , so it couldn 't be reattached . I 've never had a tooth pulled , so I was pretty nervous . But I 've got a really good dentist and it went smoothly and fairly pain free . Except , the next day I started getting a cold sore . Then developed a dry socket . The pain wasn 't excruciating , but uncomfortable and was giving me a headache . I took pain killers all weekend . Then on Monday I went back to the dentist and they put in a paste that worked wonders . Except , the next day I started breaking out in hives . I didn 't realize what it was at first , but by Friday it was starting to spread . So I went to the Clinic on Saturday morning for their walk in hours . Except , they had closed early ! So now I 'm waiting for them to open to see if they can work me in today . What next ? ! I 've heard dire predictions of snow all week and it finally got here , but luck was on our side again , and we didn 't get very much . It 's pretty , but really wet and sloppy . The last snow we had was really dry - - no shovels required . A broom was enough to do the trick ! Anyway , I have every intention to stay in today . I just got the new Dr . Who / CompleteSpecials box set and I plan on doing a bit of a movie marathon this afternoon and tomorrow ! I 've been a Dr . Who fan since I was a young teen , so the new seasons have been a high point for me the last few years . Thank goodness Syfy showed Seasons 1 - 4 because we don 't get BBC America on our cable . But they didn 't show the Specials from this last year and I had to wait until they came out on DVD . Well , the time has arrived ! Thank goodness for the snow and a reason to stay home this weekend ! I 'm still on strike , but I think I need a picket sign because I don 't think my husband actually realizes it ! It 's hard being on strike . I 've spent a big part of my day watching Life on Mars , but I keep thinking I need to get up and do something ! I 've still been cooking , because the son and I still have to eat , and I 've been doing laundry because I want my clothes washed a certain way . But I have done absolutely nothing else . How does he not catch on ? ! When I checked the Weather Channel this morning , our temperature was - 2 . Wind chill was something like - 14 . That is the coldest it has been here in around 10 years . And , of course , I feel the need to get out of the house ! Mom wants to see " Avatar " and even though I 've seen it already , I called her to see if she wants to get out today and she was all for it . But she needs to stop and get groceries afterwards . Sure , I need eggs , anyway ! So I think I 'll get some soup going in the Crockpot and start taking down the Christmas tree this morning . Yes , I 'm way behind on taking down the Christmas decorations this year . Ehh , I 'm sure I 'll get it done before the end of the month ! My husband quit his job today . It 's the 5th job he 's had since November of 2007 . He actually had this one for almost 12 months . He has been going through assorted mid - life crisis ' since the Sept . 11 terrorist attacks . I think it 's been long enough ! I 'm going on strike ! If I 'm working all of the time , and he 's home all of the time , he can do the cleaning ! Why do people think they can go into a store ( or any business , actually ) trash talk the products and the employees , and then wonder why they aren 't greeted with smiles and service ? I 'm sorry , if I 'm that unhappy with a store , I quit going there . I don 't continue to return weekly ! I had a customer today who was unhappy that we were out the bacon we had on sale . I explained to her that store policy is we only give rainchecks if we have been shorted the item and will not receive any before the sale ends . This particular customer said she wouldn 't be in again this week - - but I would almost bet she is . She comes in several times each week . And she was unhappy with the response she got from the employee in the meat department that told her we were out . ( He has had previous run - ins with her and kept his answers as short as possible . ) At that point I offered to give her the raincheck but she refused . She didn 't want it any more . She said she would just have to go to Walmart and she was having a good day until she came to the store . I mumbled " me too " and then clamped my mouth shut to avoid telling her how much we dread seeing her come in the door . I think she started to realize she had gone to far by the set of my face because her tone changed and she even tried to smile a little . 98 % of the customers are okay - - quite a few downright chatty and friendly - - but it 's that 2 % that ruin my day ! New Year , time for a new start . Why do we always pick the coldest month of the year to think that ? So many people starting diets when our bodies are telling us to take in more calories to counter the cold weather and viruses floating around . Or how about quitting smoking - - during the time of the year when we are stuck inside and bored . It would make so much more sense to wait to start new " resolutions " when the weather is nicer and we can get outside and distract ourselves from our bad habits ! My husband has decided to quit his job and study laptop repair . He wants to open his own business doing computer repair and maintenance . I would back him totally if he was going to an actual school , but he plans on doing this on - line . In fact , he has already started the program . So I have to wonder why he can 't at least work part time while he completes the program . I am seriously considering having my own mid - life crisis . I think I will start by looking for my inner Hippy ( whom I seem to have lost when I got married and had kids ) and see what she would like to do with the rest of her life ! My daughter went back to school yesterday . She was home from college for 2 weeks - - 2 weeks when I was working at the store and constantly trying to get things done around the house . I 've been behind the whole year - - don 't know why I tried to stay caught up through Christmas . I didn 't manage it , by the way . Anyway , I was busy enough that I didn 't get to spend much " alone time " with my daughter . I thought I was handling her being away really well but I think I 'm having some delayed " empty nest " or " separation anxiety " or something going on . Maybe I 'm just tired . Now she is talking about changing schools , and moving even farther away . I know it 's what she needs to do , but I 'm having a bit of a hard time with it ! I wish I had high expectations for this coming year , but I think it 's going to be an incredibly difficult one . I so hope I 'm wrong ! Flower - child , Earth - mother . Product of the ' 70s and ' 80s . I 've survived this long , I plan on surviving a bit longer and enjoying every minute of it ! |
The grant brothers series in reading order Next New Release is Jace The Double Deuce Ranch is in trouble . The taxes have tripled over the years , and the repair bills and cost of supplies are more than the Douglas men can scrape together to save the ranch . Short of a miracle they are on the street . Holly Snow has already bought four ranches this month saving them from the greedy banker . She 'll save the Double Deuce , too , if Georgie Douglas will let her . Something underhanded is driving all the ranches into foreclosure and she is determined to get to the bottom of it . To her , money is no object . Jace Douglas knows from the moment he sees Holly in that jail cell , beaten but proud , that she is his mate . His cat wants to claim his mate , but he doesn 't have two nickels to rub together , there is no way he is taking her for a mate . He can 't afford her . He is out of her league … Fate , however , has other ideas , and money , although a huge factor , never is the issue between them . Jace likes to play … a little rough . And Holly might be of a mind to just play along … Addison Parker is on the run . No matter how fast she runs , or how far she travels she can 't hide from herself , or the gift she 's been cursed with . She can read people 's minds and with a touch can see into their future . That is a secret that she has learned to keep well ― everyone always wanted something from her when they learned what she could do . It 's easier to avoid people all together . Jarrett Emerson is just helping his dad and brother protect an innocent from a perverted wretch . But when a falling brick knocks Addie unconscious , she falls right into Jarrett 's arms . To his surprise he realizes that she is his mate and human … Addie felt stupid standing there like she was and moved to the sink . Jarrett watched her before he reached for a second glass . Addie had no idea why , but she thought he was nervous . " I 'm not going to pounce on you . " As soon as the words left her mouth , she knew that she 'd made a major mistake . He turned so quickly that she backed up and hit her ass on the counter behind her . He didn 't stop there but took the two more steps to have her leaning back to look up at him . " I 'd like nothing more than to have you pounce on me . " His voice was a soft growl that had her thinking all sorts of things that had nothing to do with food . " You 're very beautiful . " " No , I 'm not . " He nodded and halved the distance between them . " You 're too close . I can 't think when you 're this close . " Jarrett doesn 't want her to leave . If she goes , he goes with her . That 's the way it is with mates . But when a corrupt attorney has other ideas , the Emersons have to regroup to protect what they now consider their own … . " Well , of course you couldn 't last for one more day , could you ? " Addie got out of the front of her camper and looked at the smoking hood . " One more day . That 's all I needed . Then I could have been settled some place nice , and you could have rested while I fixed some of the things that you needed . What is wrong with that , I ask you ? " She felt the tears well up in her eyes and let them fall . She wasn 't a whiner , nor was she all that mushy when things didn 't go her way . But it had been a long few years and she 'd just about had all she could take . If things didn 't turn around soon … well , they wouldn 't , so she had no idea why she even bothered speculating about it . She looked at the camper she 'd purchased secondhand because she was cheap , and decided that it had served her well . Better than other things and people she had in her life currently . It was a recent purchase , as her other cheap mode of transportation had also died along the way to her finding herself . The hood lifted with a loud screech . She looked around . Most of the time a person would come out of their house when someone stopped in front of their home , but it was still really early in the morning . Just shy of five , she supposed . Looking into the engine , she could see right away what it was and realized that while it was an easy fix , it wouldn 't get her far . So before she did anything like that , she pulled out her new phone and looked to see if there were any campgrounds close by . There was one , and it was open . The middle of January in Ohio more than likely didn 't see a lot of campers , but she was happy to find them not just with a listing , but one that said that you could call twenty - four seven . The snow crunched under her feet as she called . As soon as the person answered , Addie knew that she 'd woken her up . But while she sounded sleepy , she didn 't sound pissed . " I 'm so terribly sorry . But I have a bit of an emergency . I was wondering if you have a space for a camper trailer for about a month . " The woman mumbled something about how early it was and for her to hang on , so she did . Addison Parker was on the run . Not from the police or even a boyfriend . Her family was all gone except for one , and so far as she knew there was no way there could be anyone she owed money to . Who she was running from was herself , and her depression . It had come to the point in her life when she was either going to park in her garage and let the car run until it was over , or find something to keep her mind on her life . She 'd often thought , over the last few years , that she should have used the garage . " I have spaces . I 'm guessing you want some electric and water , so I 'm putting you in that kind of space . And real close to the bathroom . There 's a washer and dryer too . I 'll have my son run down and turn it on for you so 's you can use it . " The woman laughed . " Course , it 's colder than a witch 's tit in a brass brassiere out , so I 'm thinking you ain 't here to fish or look at the wildlife . " " No , ma ' am . Just having engine problems and need a place to fix it . " The woman told her it was fine . " Can you tell me how much ? For about a month or two ? I 'm no problem to have stay , I promise you . I just need a place to do some repairs . " " It won 't be the going rate being how it 's January and all . How about you pay me … ? " Addie closed her eyes , thinking that if it was anything over about fifteen hundred dollars , she was going to have to think of another place to stay . Not that she didn 't have more money , but that was all she had on her right now . " Listen , how about I let you just stay there for fifty bucks for the whole month ? That 'll get my son Josh some spending money , and I don 't have to worry about there being nobody at the sites . If you wouldn 't mind keeping an eye out for me . " " No . Not at all . " Addie laughed . " Not one bit . I have to work on getting me there . But yes . I 'd love it . Thank you so very much . " She was crying again and wiped at the cold tears on her cheeks as the woman told her what site she was in . Mrs . Carlyle told her that her son would be going down to shovel it off for her so that it would be perfect . After she hung up , she looked at her ride again . " Perfect ? How the hell would anyone think of me as perfect ? " Addie looked at the town she 'd gotten off the wrong exit for , then at her camper . " You have been my greatest purchase , yet you fail me all the time . What am I to do with you now ? " An hour and a half later , she had it running . Not well , but enough to get it started and going . She made the drive slowly , which was good , as there was little traffic out this early , and she only had to pull over once more to get it going again after putting more water in the radiator . Pulling into the spot that had been cleaned , she didn 't even have to turn the engine off , as it seemed to give up at that moment . As it sputtered to a dying stop , she laid her head on the wheel . She had things to do . Plenty to get herself ready to live in one place for a time . But for now , right now , she needed a nap . For about ten or so years , she thought . Then she had more things to do to just live . A job for starters . Something to keep her mind off things for a while , anyway . As she got out of the vehicle and moved out to put down the stands that would hold her steady while she walked around inside , she tried not to think about how cold it was and what she 'd have to do to keep warm . Then there was the power , water , and the sewage that she needed . As she hooked this up , Addie thought of how she had to call her lawyer soon . He 'd have things for her to sign , plus she needed to tell him what else she might need . They were long overdue for a talk , and she wanted him to explain a few things for her that she 'd come across when she 'd been looking at some accounts . Money was missing , and there were some back orders for things she knew that he 'd said had been delivered . As she sat up , she made herself a mental note on items to get him to send to her . " Money . " Nodding to herself , she thought of several other things she was going to need as she was looking in the engine again . " A new engine would be nice , but I 'm not sure that Carl here could handle that . " She 'd named her home after her college professor who had told her it was the little things that made a place a home . She 'd left her home with very little and now she had even less . " You usually talk to yourself ? " Addie closed her eyes when the man behind her spoke . As she turned slowly , holding the tire iron in her hand , she heard him laugh . " I 'm very harmless . My name is Josh Carlyle . My mom sent me to see what you might need . " Nodding , she still didn 't let go of the iron , and he noticed it too . " I won 't come any closer if you want . But I 'm not going to hurt you . " " So you say . " He nodded and reached slowly into his pocket with his left hand still up in the air . He told her he was going to show her his identification . " That could be just as fake . Why don 't you just move on ? I 'm not … I 'm not really good with strangers . " " I can see that . " He put his hands up again . " Okay , I 'm assuming you don 't need anything . If you do , here is my cell phone number . My mom and I will be at work until six , then home . She wanted you to come by for dinner , if you want . " He put the card on the small mailbox at the end of her space . " Thanks , but no thanks . No offense . " He nodded . " I 'm very sorry . I 've been kind of on my own for a while now , and I forgot how to be sociable . " " We 're here if you need us . " She nodded and watched him move away to a truck that she envied . Turning back to what she 'd been doing , she decided that she was too exhausted to try and figure it out . She went inside and was thrilled to find the place was already warmer than it had been , and her electric blanket had her bed all toasty . Stripping down , she locked the doors and crawled naked into the bed . She didn 't even bother with turning off the lights . As her head hit the pillow , she was asleep . But she knew that it would only last about two hours , and she 'd be up again . Cash walked around the little store twice , trying his best to remember what it was he 'd been there for . He 'd gotten to talking and now … shit , he needed to start making himself notes , he supposed . Smiling at the little girl behind the counter , he moved out of the building into the cold evening . He nearly squeaked when he saw the young woman sitting on the bench . Her feet out in front of her nearly made him trip up , but it would have been his fault . He was too busy " flirting " again ( as Slone called his trips to town ) . She was asleep . Soundly , too , if he didn 't miss his bet . And the way she was dressed had him believing that she was homeless … worn - out boots that had broken laces , a coat that was miles too big for her , and a hat that had seen better days . There was no way that a human could just sit there in this weather and not be frozen . He was nearly to his car - well , Slone 's car - when she spoke behind him . " I don 't think it 's going to start . You left your lights on . They sputtered out about ten minutes ago . " He looked at the car , then the shop . He 'd only been in there ten minutes , he was sure . " You 'll need a jump . " " You offering ? " He hadn 't meant for it to sound so dirty , but she sat up and looked at him . " I meant my car . I don 't know you well enough to make that sort of comment to you that would sound like I was flirting with you . But you get to know me and you 'll know I 'm pretty harmless . " " Men are rarely harmless . " He could hear the pain in her voice and felt his heart twist . Such a beauty and all that hatred . " I don 't have a car or I would give you a jump . I 'm sorry . " Nodding , he got into the car and put the key in . Not that he didn 't believe her , but he had to try . Nothing but a click - click - click . Getting out , he pulled the tab to open the hood and looked under it . He had no more idea what was under there than he did in the fertilizer he and Slone had ordered the other week . " Your cables are corroded . " He looked over at her when she came to stand beside him . " If you go in and get a cola , I can fix that part for you . You 're still going to need someone to give you a jump I bet , but this will keep it from happening so often . And I don 't want to be rude , but can you maybe go in and get it and come back out ? I 'm sort of looking for a job and I don 't have all day . " Cash didn 't take offense to her request . He was a social man , and people were just too friendly to not talk to . But instead of going inside , he went to the pop machine outside and got the cola she suggested . As soon as he handed it to her , she opened it and took a small sip before pouring it all over the vise - like clamps that were already pulled from the box in the corner . The nasty stuff bubbling up off them made his belly kind of wiggle . " Christ , that is some nasty shit . " Her grin told him she loved what she was doing , and he watched as the cola seemed to boil all the rust off them . Even as she used a napkin to clean them off , he was amazed at the difference . As soon as she got them back on the battery , he realized he should have called in one of his boys to help him . " You should have your battery checked out . It 's expired . " After she showed him the date on it , he wondered how Slone had ever gotten around , and told himself to ask his boys when the last time they checked theirs was . " Also , you need better tires . Those are going to get you killed . They 're nearly bald , and in this slick weather , it 'll be over before it begins . " " Thanks . Never even thought of those things . This is my daughter - in - law 's car , and she 's a little on the shy side . " She nodded and went back to the bench . Cash , never one to pass up helping somebody , even if they didn 't think they needed it , went to sit beside her . As she laid her head back , he reached for Luke , who he knew was on his way in . I got me a problem . Not a big one , but I need a jump . Luke laughed . When was the last time you had your battery checked ? This car I borrowed from Slone has a battery in it that 's nearly five years past its date . It 's a new car , so I 'm thinking I 'm good . But you 're right , I bet she … why the hell does she still have that thing anyway ? I mean , she more than likely owns a fleet of cars . Cash thought Luke might be right . I 'll be there soon . Five minutes . Cash thanked him and looked at the girl . " You should let me pay you for your help . This thing might have had my Slone out somewhere and all alone when her battery quit on her . " " No thanks . " She didn 't move as she spoke , but she did open her eyes . " You don 't know anyone that 's hiring , do you ? I mean a real job , not one you think you owe me . " It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that when she put that stipulation on him . He didn 't know of a single job . Not anything he thought she , a pretty little thing , could do . Instead of telling her no , he decided that he might need some help . " I 'm opening an office . Not sure what sort of help I might need , but I could use someone to answer my phone , do a little filing . Can you do any of that ? " She sat up and then stood . " Is that a no ? " " It is . I have to get back . I 'm … I 'm having a bad day and I need to be alone . " Cash had a feeling that she didn 't need to be alone , that it might be the worst idea she 'd ever had . He stood up . " Thanks for the drink . " It took him a few seconds to figure out what she meant . She 'd taken a sip of the cola and that was all . As he turned to go after her , Luke pulled in front of his car . When he turned back , she was gone . " Dad ? " He started down the street , and Luke called him back . " I thought you needed a jump . I 'm already running behind . I 'm sorry . I 'm going in to file some paperwork I forgot to do today . " " There was this girl . Woman , I guess . She looked … she helped me , and now I don 't think she should be alone . " Luke looked down the street , then at him . " She was here . Used a cola to clean off them terminals . I never knew about that . And people put that stuff in their body ? " " I saw her . Who is she ? " Cash told him he had no idea . " Well , that was really nice of her to help you . If you have something that belongs to her , we can hunt her down for you . Why are you afraid she shouldn 't be alone ? " " I don 't know . I just have a feeling … Luke , you know how that woman you knew some time ago - the one that went and killed herself - how she looked all the time ? " Luke nodded , sadness in his eyes . " I 'm sorry , boy , I am . But this here girl , she looked about ten times worse . Like the thought of dying was much better than living . " Luke looked in the direction she 'd gone . Cash looked as well . He had a feeling that the girl was going to harm herself . And if she did , he was afraid he 'd be haunted by her for the rest of his life . He looked at Luke . " I 'm going to open an office . Like the one you and Jack was telling me about . " Luke nodded as he hooked up the cables to his battery . " You go on and fix me up on that , please . That building next to your wife 's , it 'll do just fine . " " Dad , what 's this about ? You didn 't even want to talk about it the other night . Why now ? " He looked in the direction the girl had gone . " This have to do with her ? That girl tell you something ? Ask you for something so you 'd do it ? " " No . Damn it , boy . What makes you think that some snip of a girl is going to be able to make me do a damned thing I don 't want to ? " Cash huffed . " Damn it all to hell . There is something about her that makes me think she 's a danger . To herself . " " How ? " He wasn 't sure and told him that . " I don 't understand . You think she 's going to kill herself ? Why ? What did she say ? " Cash got into the car when Luke told him to . He had no idea what it was about her . There was something there . Something profoundly sad that made him want to find her right then and fix it . When the car roared to life , he got out and stood by his son . " She 's got a sadness about her that hurts me right here . " Cash put his hand over his heart . " Luke , if something happens to her , anything , I 'm going to be hurting too . I don 't even know her name or a thing about her , but I like her . She is … I don 't know , I really like her . " " All right , Dad . Let me see what I can find out . " Luke got into this car and looked out at his dad . " You have her scent ? Anything ? " Cash picked up the can and handed it to him . After Luke took it to his nose and handed it back , Cash did the same , taking in her scent to keep it with him . When his son took off , Cash went to the diner and had a little talk with Mable . If anyone knew anything , she would . And by golly , damned if she didn 't . " There is this girl that is camping at my place . Don 't think it 's her though . Josh said she was on the scared side . Wouldn 't even let him take out his license to show her who he was . " Cash had a feeling this was his girl . " Tall , about six foot , he said . Skinny and a little on the busty side . " " That 's her . Yeah , busty , that 's a good name for her . Dark hair . Looks like a good wind would lift her up and toss her away . " Mable called Josh from the back , and he nodded at his description of the girl . " What 's her name ? " " She gave me one , but I 'm thinking it 's just short for something . Addie Parker , she said . Her truck is broke down , she told me , and she needed some place to fix it . " Mable looked at Josh . " Anything you can tell Mr . Emerson here ? " " She was threatened . " Cash started to ask him what he meant . " As soon as she saw me , she held that tire iron like she was gonna use it on me . I think she would have , too . And her engine is gone . I could smell it from the car when I was leaving . But she didn 't strike me as someone who would trust you if you had a string of priests telling her you were fine . " " She 's stranded then ? " Josh nodded at him . " Good . The longer the better . I want you to let me know if she comes in here . I won 't go out there and bother her none , not yet at any rate , but if you see her let me know . I 'm gonna … I need to keep an eye on her for a bit . " As soon as he turned around and got back to where he 'd seen her , he pulled over . She wasn 't around , of course . That would have been too easy . He moved up and down the street until he got to Jack 's building . Slipping inside , he stood in front of the big window while he watched . Cash felt Jack before she said anything . " You have a date or something ? " He told her about the girl . " Ah , so you 're stalking . That 's not good . There are laws about that , I think . Should I tell your sons ? I 'm sure that Hunter will have a lot to say about you stalking someone . " " No , there 's no reason to tell them . Luke knows , but … I just have a feeling about her … this girl , I mean ; that 's all . " He looked at her then . Christ , this woman made his heart flutter every time he looked at her . " You 're awfully pretty today . That mate of yours is picking out your clothes again , I 'm betting . " " No , he is not . As a matter of fact , Slone and I went shopping . She has excellent taste . I was going to go with her tomorrow . " They both stared out the window . " What 's the story on your date ? " " I don 't want to date her . " He 'd snapped before he could think not to , and she laughed at him . " She 's just a woman that I have a fear for , that 's all . There is just something about her that makes me want to pull her into my arms and keep her safe . " " I don 't know her , but if you have that feeling , I 'll help you . " They both moved away from the window , and he noticed then that the store was dark behind them . " I was just closing up . Luke called to say that he has to work on something for an hour or so . So I 'm all alone . Wanna take a lonely woman out to dinner ? " " Hell yeah . " As she pulled on her jacket , he thought of the other woman . She might be cold or hungry . His resolve to find her doubled and it nearly took his breath away with it . " Jack , do me a favor . If you find this girl , see if you can get her a coat or something to put on . I think she might be a little on the stubborn side . " " Stubborn , huh ? I don 't know that many stubborn people , but I 'll give it my best . " He stared at her until she started to laugh . " I 'm kidding . But I will keep an eye out for you . " Thanking her and walking her across the street , Cash wanted to go and see her now , his mystery woman . Even though he knew where she was and that he could be there in no time , he decided to wait . For now anyway . As soon as they entered the diner again , he was filled with a sense of wellness . The girl would be all right , he knew , for one more night Royce The Hunter Series Chapter 11 is ready to read Chapter 11 Daniel put down the phone and leaned back in his chair . Royce was going to be a father . Daniel had not seen that one coming . . . Royce The Hunter Series Chapter Eight is ready to read Chapter 8 Leah was exhausted . Her head was pounding too . She put her untouched dinner in the sink and went into the living room to watc . . . |
She couldn 't stop worrying as they took turns carrying the golden haired knight , no king is what the sorcerer called him , out of the bundle of underbrush . No matter how gentle they tried to get him to safety they could all see that he was struggling . His pain had to have been high as he slightly coughed and groaned through their journey . As soon as they made it out of the sorcerer 's protective gathering of trees she hurried over to create something that would block the downpour . Using vines and weaving techniques she usually reserved for making baskets and feet mats , she tied together branches of trees and ferns . It wasn 't going to be a perfect covering , but she needed something to lay the man under . " I can 't , " she whispered back . The others were in varying states of shock , wonder , and even anger . Elyan was worried for his sister mostly , but worried what would happen if she couldn 't save the king 's life . Percival was tired , since he did most of the carrying of the man , and Lancelot was still in a bit of shock of discovering who this man really was . The ire was coming off of Gwaine , who was now pacing in the pouring rain and stomping into the mud fiercely . Lancelot wasn 't afraid of the dark haired man , but he certainly wasn 't stupid . The drunk had thrown himself into a state . " Need a drink ? " he asked as he approached like coming upon a wild animal . Gwaine stopped pacing and eyed him suspiciously . " We have been together on this journey for about two weeks now , and suddenly you have a pint ? " The man 's anger was thrown into his words . It spoke volumes of warning and Lancelot understood the threat . Out of the corner of both of their eyes they saw Percival shift slightly . He was getting ready to break up the fight . When the dragon awoke a bit later to the dry sun baking against his scales , he felt peace inside . Merlin opened his eyes as well and they both just enjoyed the peace away from the storm in silence . The sun was dropping beyond the far off gray clouds and they both knew night would be on them soon . Merlin wanted to sleep in his fern bed inside and not on the now dry ground , but he didn 't want to leave yet . " How do you know me ? " he asked suddenly to the dragon . He shifted as the dragon carefully raised his head to regard the small sorcerer beside him . Well , the young man was small to the enormous dragon , at least . Kilgharrah saw the boy shake his head suddenly as he imagined the thoughts running through it were immense . The child did not understand that his purpose was to be near the king . The dragon held his thoughts to himself , though . " Young warlock , " he called out to gain the dragon lord 's attention . " What is a warlock ? " Merlin asked suddenly . He still didn 't look up . A shiver caught suddenly and he wrapped his arms around himself . He was unsure and scared . The little bit of advice that Kilgharrah was going to bestow onto the young man was drowned even further back into the dragon 's brain . This boy wasn 't the knowledgeable young man that Gaius had promised would be there to call him when he was able to . This was a terrified child hidden within the confines of an adult body . This boy had the magic only others could dream of , but without the teacher to show how to use it . Merlin never found out the answer to his innocent question as the trees burst suddenly spewing out fifty soldiers . The dragon reared up to defend his master as Merlin went to hide inside the house . The warlock never made it into the confines of the tree fort . The dragon was so distracted by the swords , spears , and arrows that he didn 't even notice when the young magic user snuck upon the dragon lord . Merlin only saw a sudden sight of green to gold before his own world turned black . Disclaimer : I don 't own Gundam Wing . I think I forgot to say that last chapter . Don 't sue me ! I don 't have enough lint for a lint ball ! The screams finally silenced as their echoes disappeared against the walls . Daniel 's sobs , though , didn 't stop . " I really don 't know , " he continued to cry as he watched the henchmen check the pulse of the younger boy . Daniel couldn 't recognize him any longer and he knew that the poor child would have nightmares for years to come from this . If Daniel could give them the information before they were both killed , that is . " Please , leave him alone . Come after me ! Leave him alone ! " his last words were screamed in anger at the woman he had been relying on for the last year . " Awe , darling , I couldn 't do that . You were trained to withstand such torture . We have tried that before , " she said as she sauntered up to his bound chair . " I was hoping we could get you to talk with just torturing your innocent friend , but I guess we 'll have to put him out of his misery . " Yes , ' before ' . After you stole from us we found you in your hide out and flushed you out . We then did everything we could to gather the information from you . We would have just killed you , except you kept saying it would be found if you die . As we were transporting you to another place , because Preventers had been tipped off somehow , you escaped . Brian forgot to put the child lock on the back doors of the car . He won 't be making that mistake , or any more mistakes , again , " she smiled at him with full teeth . It was a smile Daniel had thought once to be kind , but now wondered if this was her version of a shark grin . " My day job allowed me to get close to you when we found out you had been saved from death . I was weary at first that you 'd recognize me , but you didn 't . I kept moving you to different places , horrible ones when I had the chance , to try and get you to remember something , " she sighed . " I don 't want to have to kill your friend . He really didn 't even know he was making friends with a terrorist and thief . " Daniel asked , " What did I steal ? " She needed to be talking to delay the inevitable . He didn 't know why but he was sure that he just had to buy them time . " Maybe I 'll remember if I knew what I took . " She stopped for a minute . A complete stillness came over her as she studied his purple eyes . She finally spoke , " Our plans for spreading a disease using foster care children . It is a brilliant plan , really . At first I thought you were pretending amnesia to get into the system to learn more about what you had stolen … anyway , long story short , it 's already begun . We started in Britain yesterday and today millions of foster care kids are getting vaccinated against a new disease that we have let the media suppose was running rampant through the country . Just like bird flu and swine flu , it is said to originate through cows and their meat . In all meat eating countries it was perfect . " Daniel tried to wrack his brain to remember if he 'd seen any news reports like it . He hadn 't , but really it was because the other pilots had cut his cable off in his room . They had numerous times tried to get him to sit with them for the evening news in the main living room of the mansion , but he had refused . For a week now he had missed this vital information spreading across the airwaves because he had been depressed . Anger shot through him . His arms tightened against their bindings and he felt the rope dig into his wrists . It wasn 't long before the tickle of the blood pooling from his wounds came down his fingers . His violet eyes turned dark as he stared at this horrible woman in front of him . She didn 't seem to notice the sudden burst of strength from her captive , " Of course we do have a counter virus . We have inoculated the higher ups with it . The rich have requested the ' vaccine ' as well and have received the true vaccine . The poor are a leech on our system and the foster care kids go to the poor who abuse it . They get medical free and food free . These people take and take and take . We 're doing everyone a favor by ridding the obsolete from this world . " As she talked flashes of memories came to Daniel 's mind - No , not Daniel , Duo 's mind . Solo dying as he coughed from a plague that took out the entire gang of friends , family , he had when he was just a small child . Dead bodies everywhere and hunger pains attacking his body as he was afraid to leave them alone . For some reason , though , he didn 't get sick . The plague had taken out most of the poorest populations on L2 and he had survived . He was Duo , named after his older brother Solo . He pulled harder on his ropes and felt them begin to snap . His body had been dormant for a year , and he had eaten well but not what he would normally eat to keep up strength . He didn 't care as he heard Sam start to come back to the world on consciousness . He needed to get out of here , find where he had hidden the information he stole , and get Sam to safety . Alecia stepped back as the bindings broke and he stood up . He didn 't give her time as he lunged forward to get her into his bloody hands . She stepped back and away as her five goons jumped into action to save their leader . He was punched in the face before her broke the first goons neck . He tripped the second one , but everything stopped when the windows above them burst out . Yelling came from all around them . He almost laughed , but instead he pulled the Sandrock pilot away from him , " No . There 's a virus out there spreading right this minute . We need to stop it ! " He looked over as Trowa and ambulance crews were tending to Sam . " And he needs his mom . " Quatre nodded and pulled Duo away from the arresting of Alecia . A rhythmic thunder sounded through the sky as Mordred looked up . He saw a black shape fly high above him and he wondered if he had hallucinated . A dragon or something else ? He thought hard to remember some of the books Morgana had given him about the creatures in the area . It had to have been a dragon . He called for the knights to hurry and quickly they rushed their steeds into the driving rain . The wind soaked through their chain mail , but Mordred feared they wouldn 't be in time . Merlin rushed to his feet as a creatures of great size barreled toward them . Arthur yelled out , " Dragon ! " Merlin didn 't stay long where he had been pushed . His feet carried him into his home as the king 's companions drew their weapons . The maw of the beast opened and hot flame spewed forth . It created a barrier between the sorcerer and the travelers . His scales gleamed a dark red against the bright sun . The clouds came into the clearing for the first time in days as Merlin felt the fear trap into his heart again . He knew the dragon wouldn 't harm him , for he also knew he had someone called the thing to that place , but he feared that Arthur would defeat it . If the king took out the dragon , then he could easily capture and kill Merlin . The other slight fear was that the dragon would kill the king . Even deep down inside of the brunette he felt the friendship was still there . He couldn 't deny that Arthur had been there for him all of those years during his captivity . The sounds of the battle were harsh against his ears as he snuck a peak through the vines . The men were holding well against the dragon . He could see that even the beast knew Merlin 's heart , because he kept them at bay but did not go in for any serious injury . He hoped they would just tire and give up . He wanted to just be left alone . If he had known how to stop the storm , he would have done it . He knew that people were dying . He was aware that people were going to die for possibly years to come even after the storm stopped . Homes were gone , fields were flooded , and food stores would be rotten or looted within the next few months . He wasn 't the idiot the king called him . He knew the implications of having such a curse on the land . The problem was that he was also being truthful . He didn 't know how to stop it . He didn 't even know how he had cursed the land in the first place . He knew he had sent out some powerful magic during the celebrations , but he didn 't know that it would cause such suffering . His magic could be unpredictable , but it had never been this full of malice before . He didn 't understand it . Honestly , even before he had only done damage by breaking vials or exploding candles when he had tried to suppress his magic . He had never done anything such as cursing an entire place . He wondered how his magic could have gotten to the point bring down the heavens on everyone in Albion . The dragon roared suddenly . It reared up onto its back legs suddenly . Merlin saw a sword embedded deep into its hide of the front . Maneuvering the large body it struck out with the massive tail . The appendage collided with the blond king in a sickening crunch . Throwing the monarch far from the battle and into the tree line . Merlin thought for sure the man had been killed . The others saw their leader tossed and backed away from the fight . The woman , Merlin just really noticed her , ran for Arthur to prop him up and check on him . The rain came down harshly and drowned out the sounds . Merlin almost ran to join the group to find out if his friend had been killed . They quickly gathered him up . One of the knights , a man with long wild hair , turned sad eyes toward the sorcerer and dragon . Then they rushed out of the now soaked clearing with the body of his king between them . The dragon groaned and lay down onto the mud beneath . The boy ran out to him and quickly grabbed onto the hilt of the sword . " I have to remove it so I can heal it , " he informed the beat . The dragon nodded in consent , but still screamed out when the blade was pulled from between his tough scales . " It missed my heart , young warlock , " the dragon spoke to him . He only glanced barely to the new friend as he pushed against the bleeding wound . He shoved his magic into the slash and tried to direct it to help . It didn 't do much and the dragon chuckled , " You are not made to heal me , Merlin . " " You called me here . Shouldn 't it be obvious that I would know who you are ? " the dragon gave an odd toothy grin even as he settled down farther into the earth . " I am Kilgharrah . I am the last of my kind and you are the only of your kind , " with that said the great golden eyes shut and he lay his large red scaled head down onto the ground . Deep breaths came through with a rumble and Merlin realized the dragon had fallen asleep . Gathering his magic he forced the sky to open above his clearing once again and bring down sun . The little rain that had come through now was quickly soaking into the ground . The animals were weary of the massive magical creature laying outside of the tree house , but they still came out from hiding . The sorcerer had a lot to think about . How did he call the dragon to him ? It had been an instinct in him to do so and it had felt different than his chaotic magic . Why did Arthur have a woman among his knights ? He knew his king wouldn 't bring a woman along on a quest , so how did they end up with one in their group ? He looked up to where the sun was shining in the blue sky above . The swirling of grey clouds could be seen on the edges of the tree tops . If he could clear away his little area , could he clear away the storm from all of Albion ? No , probably not . He couldn 't even heal his dragon of a sword wound . He wasn 't powerful enough to save Albion from a curse . Even a curse he had someone put onto the land himself . He leaned against the side of the dragon , being mindful of the wound that was still there but had stopped bleeding . He looked over at where Arthur had landed against the tree on the edge of the forest . Was the king dead ? If he wasn 't , would he just leave Merlin alone ? Probably not . His blue eyes clouded over and he yawned before falling asleep against the warmth of the scaly hide . His body shuddered , sweat ran down his face and skin , and he tried his best to not gasp or pant . Sleep called to him from the darkness and he fought as hard as he could to not succumb to the temptation . " Now … I … lay … me … " he said slowly to the black . He never finished as his fight against the lack of oxygen was lost . His body was being dragged to somewhere else . His head was hitting the bumps in the concrete flooring and his ankles were being gripped by strong hands . The headache pounding in his brain meant he was alive . The glorious air was filled with much needed oxygen . His lungs burned with the sudden need to get as much as possible into his system as quickly as possible . He couldn 't even care at the moment where these bad guys were taking him , because he was alive . His eyes stayed shut and he almost grunted with each abrupt smack against his cranium . " Daniel ! " a high pitched male child yelled into the room . Daniel opened his eyes as the man pulled him to an upright position . He looked across the room of a warehouse to see his friend Sam strapped into a chair as the man did the same to Daniel . " Daniel ! " the boy cried out again before another man , one Daniel hadn 't registered was there , shoved a cloth into the child 's mouth . Daniel tried to clear his head as he looked around . They were in a shipping warehouse of some sort . Light streamed in through windows three or four stories above the concrete floor they were on . It was daylight out . Boxes stacked around them had no markings to identify what was inside . Daniel had thought there were two men , but now he realized there were at least five . The men all wore the same gray t - shirts , blue jeans and had shaved their heads clean . They were all tan and Daniel was guessing some form of Latin American . They didn 't talk as they stood around with space between them waiting for something . The boss was late or trying to make an entrance . Daniel tried to show Sam with his eyes that everything was going to be alright . He would have called out to him , but breathing was still difficult enough . ' Please understand , ' he thought . As his breath started to calm down and oxygen filled his body again in the places he desperately needed it to be in , a woman clicked into the room . At first Daniel thought that his brain still was deprived of cellular use , but then it all caught up to him as she spoke , " Hello Duo . I hope they didn 't rough you up too much . " " Oh Duo … " she walked forward and leaned down in front of him , " You have something of mine . I need it back . Where is it ? " Her sweet smile turned to a sneer . Her manicured hands came out and brushed down his cheek , " I know your memories are returning . I just want to know where you put it and I 'll let poor little Sam go home . " Behind her Sam started struggling in his bindings and humming against the dirty cloth . She moved out of Daniel 's view so he could watch his friend . " I don 't know what you 're looking for ! " Daniel yelled . " Let us go ! I really haven 't gotten my memories back ! " She started to tisk against her teeth as she walked over to the younger boy . The blond looked from Alecia to Daniel and tried to struggle out of his chair . " Oh , poor Sam … Boys , why don 't you help Duo remember what he stole from me ? " One of the henchmen nodded and walked toward Sam who was now screaming in fear and crying . Daniel didn 't have the chance to look away as another bulky guy grabbed his head and forced him to watch . " I don 't know ! " Daniel kept chanting as loud as he could . He tried to keep his voice above that of his friend 's so that the crazy lady would listen to him and stop . Arthur saw Guinevere yawning next to her brother as they struggled further into the now dense brush . Lancelot stumbled into the back of Gwaine for the fifth time since they had entered the forest . Gwaine mumbled something , but they all knew it would be hazardous if any of them went further apart . It was hard enough on them trying to walk through the ferns and stay in each other 's sights . The king sighed as they once again stumbled past a large tree . They came out the other side and he looked up to search for the bright sun again . In front of him were dark clouds and over to the left of his vision was the bright golden light they sought . " Gwaine ! " he called out . Gwaine grumbled again and they marched on . Far in the distance the sky grumbled along with them . They were sure the clouds would open again and down pour onto them all . They shivered with the thought . As the sky gave a large burst of light and the resounding crack , they burst through the foliage . Behind them they heard the sound of the large droplets falling , but where they stood was dry . It was like they had walked through the curtain at a waterfall . It caused a few to stumble . There standing in front of them was a few deer , a unicorn , and a bear all drinking from a stream caused by the rain falling on one side of the clearing to the other . They all stared for a second before Guinevere giggled at the feeling of finally being dry . The men all smiled as well and congradulated Gwaine for getting them in . They all felt elation at their freedom from the storm . Arthus broke away from the small celebration and looked farther into the clear . He noticed a large tree , or rather three trees twined together almost unnaturally , to create a structure . It looked like a house almost . The others followed as he stumbled slowly toward the abode . hearing their feet crunch against the dry green grass made him realize he had company . His body turned quickly and blue eyes gazed at the crowd . " Uh , " he started and gathered his thoughts quickly , " I don 't think you all should be with me when I confront him . " " And I sent him here with his fear by throwing him into a crowd in the first place , " Arthur admitted . He looked at Guinevere who nodded . She turned to everyone and with her own scowl everyone else nodded too . They didn 't know the story like Elyan , Leon and she did , but they could see that Arthur really did need to go in on his own . " We will only wait for a bit , Arthur . If you don 't return soon we will come for you . Remember , he is a sorcerer . He is dangerous , " Leon said as he clasped a comforting hand onto the monarch 's shoulder . Arthur gave a quick nod of his golden head and turned back to the tree . He passed by the animals and watched as they closely eyed him , but they never moved to flee . They felt very safe in this haven from the storm . His body gave tingles as he approached the house of his friend . The magic was thick in the air . He reached the vines covering the entrance to the small tower . he reached forward and parted them to enter inside . " Merlin ? " he called into the dim lighten main area . A gasp was heard and he looked up the spiral wooden stairs that followed the path of the spiral walls . A landing was about ten feet above where the king stood and there stood the sorcerer . Merlin 's eyes were wide in shock and a bit of fear . " What are you doing here ? " the dark haired man asked . " Idiot . I am here to rescue a maiden it seems . Nice tower you made for yourself , " Arthur said as he crossed his arms on his chest . " Good thing you 're not one , then , " Merlin muttered . Arthur glared a bit at him as he continued , " How did you get in here ? I portected this space . " Both men stood threatening to each other and Arthur realized this wasn 't how he had meant this meeting to go . The warlock shook his head and pushed passed the royal toward the vine covered door . He pushed through while talking , " I 'm not going to return to just be put on a pyre ! I refuse to be executed . Here … here I am finally free . I don 't want to live in solitude within the confines of walls anymore . This is beautiful , free , and I don 't want to return to my imprisonment ! " Arthur followed out fast behind him . " You have to come back ! The storm is killing people , " he grabbed onto the younger man 's peasant shirt and forced him to stop . He didn 't want him to leave the place until he could tell him about his companions , but he realized too late that they had left the home . " I can 't stop the storm ! I don 't even know how I started it ! I have never done magic like that before ! What you see here is the only deliberate magic I have done in years ! I cannot help you ! Are you going to kill me now ? " he screamed . " I can 't ! I won 't ! " Merlin yelled back . Arthur didn 't know what to do , so he did the only thing he could think at that moment - he pushed Merlin to the ground , straight onto his backside . It was a childish thing , he knew , but he was angry that his friend didn 't care about the people dying across the land . He was wrong . Merlin did care , but he really didn 't know how to stop something that he didn 't even know how he started . His rear end shot pain through up his back , but his pride hurt more . His chest ached suddenly from feeling betrayed by the only voice he had heard for years . Arthus yelled at him some more , " I don 't care if I have to kill you ! Stop this storm ! Stop being a sorcerer ! " Both of their eyes widened as the king had said something he couldn 't take back . He didn 't mean it , but Merlin was certain he did deep inside . Both sets of blue eyes were shocked at such harsh words . Quickly Arthur went to apologize as he heard his companions come running to them throuigh the clearing . Merlin 's eyes , though , went dark . " Get out , " he grounded out . Slowly he stood from the ground and didn 't take his eyes away from his enemy . " Get out , Arthur ! " he yelled . Daniel was still staring at the chair Wufei had vacated when the other four pilots came into the room . Quatre immediately went to sit next to him on the bed while the others stood around . Daniel looked over at Quatre , " Sam is missing . " Quatre nodded . Wufei looked down as his cell phone beeped . " It 's from Lady Une . She says she is looking at the police reports now . " He waited as his phone beeped again . Heero sat down and pulled his laptop from underneath the bed . Daniel didn 't even know that he had kept it under there . The tapping from both of them had everyone else watching as they waited . Wufei continued , " She sees nothing amiss with the reports . Looks like a standard grab and disappear . No connection . " Quatre sighed , " No connection with what happened to you . " His blue eyes searched the purple in front of him and Daniel knew he was looking for if Daniel could remember anything more than what they had already figured out , which wasn 't much besides he was found in a ditch . He looked away and fingered the cross hanging from his neck . " No , you are staying here . We , as in the rest of us , are going to go and find him , " Quatre said as gently as he could . " Please don 't hurt yourself while we 're away . We want to bring Sam back to you alive and well . " Daniel nodded and whispered out a promise . He was disappointed to be staying behind , but without his memories his body and brain did not always meet in the right place . He couldn 't remember all of what the others could do and he probably would hinder the investigation more than help at this point . Daniel had his hair pulled back and he was crouched down low to the grass as he watched the dogs walk by . Their ears swiveled toward him but they kept on walking alongside their handlers . Slowly he crept out and kept alongside one of the hedges . Counting to five in his head after watching the camera turn he dashed across the lawn toward the tree . He stayed still against the tree as guards with guns walked by . He shut his eyes to keep the light from their flashlights from bouncing in reflection . Listening intently he knew when the crunch of their feet was far enough away . He looked really quick for the sign of the camera making its rounds . He had four seconds to make it to the wall and shimmy up . He took off again . Using skills he didn 't remember having he launched himself up the wall , over it and onto the street on the other side . He allowed himself to fall down to his knees to quiet the landing on the pavement . His smile broke as he sighed . He made it out of Quatre 's compound even without memories on how he knew what to do . He didn 't need his memories to find Sam . Now he just had to go back to the front gate , tell Rashid what he had done , and call Quatre to tell him he can join in the search . His feet didn 't even make it away from the wall when pain shot through his neck . He reached up and pulled out something . Confusion came into his brain as he held what looked like a dart in his hand . Then the world turned into a swirling mess before he felt his legs give way . It spun and spun as darkness engulfed him . His shoulders hurt , his side hurt , and as he pulled on his legs he realized his ankles hurt . Slowly he opened his eyes . Black , so black that for a minute panic almost set in . Was he blind now too ? No , it was just a closed room . Not even a sliver of light came in from where ever the door was . The air was stale , too , meaning that there wasn 't a vent in the room . It was sealed and his only hope to not be suffocated was that someone opened the door in the next two hours . His brain supplied all of the calculation and a bit of a memory of something similar happening at some point in his life … with Wufei , he thought . He shuffled a bit and heard the scrape of his cross against the floor . So the floor was made of concrete and so were the walls from the way the acoustics bounced . If bats could have echo location , than he was sure he could as well . Carefully he scooted until he had the chain in his mouth . He tapped the end of the cross against the floor he listened for return sounds . The room was empty from what he could tell . The pinging stopped and settled . His arms and ankles were tied tightly and he knew his fingers had to have been purple . They really didn 't want him to escape . He felt a giggle peak up through his throat , but choked it down . He 'll laugh later when the kidnappers arrive or right before he died . Today is the fourteenth year after that fateful day in New York , D . C . and that field in Pennsylvania . Today marks another year passed that terrorists tried to take down the United States people . Yet , I wonder if the children now understand what that day was like for most of us who lived through it ? Last week on Friday I found out that my own children have a large amount of compassion for humans they don 't even know . We don 't have a television antenna or cable or internet to stream news . We use our radio . Every morning we listen to the news talk radio on our way into town . Last week they listened as thousands of people tried to escape war by entering into other countries . I explained to my children what was going on as they asked questions about where these places were and what was happening . By the end of the week my kids were wondering why we couldn 't just live where we wanted to , since we all live on the same planet ? Today children held their voices back and lowered their heads in honor to those who died fourteen years ago . My niece and nephew , on the other hand , tried to tell me how they learned about it in school . I watched in bewilderment as my niece laughed and smiled her way through her explanation of it all . I turned on my hotspot and streamed a video of that day to show her . I couldn 't hold my tears as my memory of that fear and sorrow came again . She shrugged and said , " Did people die ? Like in a movie ? " Like in a movie … My kids had had to be removed from the classroom like they did every year because they were crying too hard . But my kids are the ones who aren 't " normal " . Their classmates don 't understand why they cry hearing about someone they don 't know who died . My younger coworkers are the same way . They don 't remember it and they just shrug . Today is another day for these kids . It isn 't that to me , though . I remember the phone call that morning before the phones became jammed . I remember the excitement at first as I told my classmates in my high school and then the confusion as our school was locked down . I lived in Las Vegas . New York could have been South Africa to me at that moment . Then came the announcement that all teachers were not to allow radio or television in the classes . We were deaf and blind sitting in those schools . My dad had me removed after threatening to sue the district . I remember coming out of the building to the court yard to see the elementary kids being herded into the high school gym and probably down to the bomb shelters below . My dad roughly brought me to the van where the radio turned on to report the Pentagon had been hit . My heart pounded as the excitement turned to fear . I was in a major city and one that brings in traffic from around the world . At home I was told to get on the computer and get in contact with my siblings on the East Coast . My two brothers and a sister lived and worked in the tristate area . I didn 't have much information on them except for an email address . I instant messaged another sister , one who was in Florida , and we both kept trying to contact the oldest three . The phones were useless anyway . As the trade center fell I began to feel numb . We had watched live as people had jumped and reports came in that a group had been found in our own airport . As the buildings fell we cried . For the first time in my life I saw my dad sob . My brain filled in that those were dads , moms , sisters , brothers , daughters and sons . My own brothers could be in the rubble beneath . Those buildings could have been the casino my dad works in instead of a sky scraper on the other side of the world . That day filled me with a new fear and determination . August 2003 I walked into a recruiters office with the image of those buildings in my head . I boarded a plane for Recruit Training Command with a burning for the people who died on those four planes in 2001 . Maybe these kids don 't understand that fear , but I hope that one day they will know the compassion for those who survived it . I hope one day they will feel the burn inside to live everyday to protect the innocent . I have the new fear that we have desensitized our youth , though . The smile and the shrug make me worry that we won 't remember . One day those innocent people and their families will just be a picture in a history book . I hope that a few will still shed a tear . The sound of knocking echoed in the chamber and the candles flickered suddenly on the table in front of her . She sighed and called out to enter . As the door opened the flames stilled once again and she went back to her writing . A young man of about 16 entered the room in a full chain mail and a flowing red banner cloak . He bowed his head , " My lady ? " She looked up at the black hair and smiled as she stood , " Mordred , my dear ! No need to be so proper ! We 're friends , right ? " He nodded and smiled . His green eyes flowed with adoration for the woman in front of him . " Morgana , what did you need me for ? " his voice belied his age to maybe even that of a younger child . Morgana pitied the boy , she really did . He had been orphaned so young , but she was lucky enough to have hid him during most of the purge and then convince Agravaine to train him into the knighthood . Without her help and the love the former king had had for his ward , she would have never been able to keep the child safe . Then again , in light of the newest developments with the boy Merlin , maybe she should have just went to Uther with the child in front of her . Shaking away her thoughts she smiled brighter and took the knights hands into her own . " I need him found , Mordred . I can trust no one else with this task . Please , tell only a handful of knights and search him out yourself , " her eyes brimmed with unshed tears . " He needs to be found alive . Bring him back here alive . " As the door shut behind with a resounding thud her smile dropped . Turning angrily toward the servant 's door she snapped , " Agravaine , I told you before that spying was a despicable act . One not becoming of a noble . " " We need to stop this storm . You know the people cannot continue this way any longer . Without him we are not able to continue any longer , either … " she paused and looked up at him . " Why did you argue with me in the conference ? " " I did so to keep the council men contained … My lady , why did you burst in like that ? We could have discussed this at a later date and still you could have sent Mordred without my consent . You needn 't have had to take my pride like that in front of the men , " Agravaine stopped suddenly and looked terrified . " I apologize . I didn 't … " " You did , " she said . They stayed in silence for a minute . The candles again flickered as she looked up at the regent , " You may leave now . I 'll discuss things with you again later . " The king was soaked and in a sour mood when they were walking once again over another hill . They had just crossed a newly formed stream and the rain was once again large drops . They were heavy with the water and exhausted from the quest . Gwaine 's voice rang through the sound of the downpour , " One more hill and we 'll see it ! " Arthur felt his shoulders sag a bit with the good news . They were almost there and soon Merlin would just stop this horrible storm . At the top of the crest they saw the most glorious sight ever . A large hole in the clouds shone down golden light into the tree line just beyond them . It really didn 't seem that difficult to reach , either . A few of the guys smiled at the sight and Guinevere giggled from the sadle . They were almost there . They walked faster as they rushed to meet the new tree line . As they stopped in front of the large trunks Gwaine turned to look at everyone . " One thing before we enter , " he said . " You need to trust me to lead the way . No matter which way you think I 'm taking you , " the last bit was said while staring into Arthur 's eyes . The king narrowed his eyes in suspicion . Disclaimer : I do not own Gundam Wing . I wish I owned it , or maybe even the mansion described as Quatre 's . I don 't own one of those , either . Daniel was amazed when they drove through the white large fence gates . There were big burley men , dogs , and guards everywhere . He watched carefully as they passed each one but the house froze any thoughts he had of trying to deceive his way out of the sanctuary . The mansion was huge from the outside and his purple eyes immediately took in the gleam of where the sun bounced off of the security cameras . This place was more secure than he had ever thought before . Whoever did the security was a genius . His brain tried over and over to come up with ways to avoid the guards , dogs or cameras . " Wow … " he breathed as he stepped out of the parked black sedan onto the gravel entry . Quatre and Heero stepped out of the front seats , Quatre had been driving . He heard a chuckle from the blond and turned to look over at him . " You said that the last time you were here , " Quatre smiled at him . " When I asked you and Heero here to check the security I have and upgrade it all ? " It was a question on whether Daniel remembered . He didn 't so he ignored it and started to follow the silent soldier into the huge double doors ahead . They had done a wonderful job on the security and Daniel couldn 't remember if he had left any holes big enough for him to slip out of . Two other friends showed up the next day . Daniel refused to come out of his room , but they refused to leave him alone . They had given him a bedroom with a lock but he quickly found that they were just as good at unlocking it as he was at rigging it to be locked . The Chinese boy , Wufei , seemed to be on guard and Quatre said he was waiting to see if Daniel was faking the amnesia . It only took the first day for Wufei to relax and realize that Daniel was not playing a joke on him or the others . He was smart and just a slight taller than Daniel . Wufei scolded him like a father would when he found out Daniel hadn 't been taking his growth pills , but Daniel could not be remorseful since he didn 't know why he had stopped taking them . Daniel noticed quickly that Wufei was a ranter and it was a bit funny to watch the other boy in his animation about things he took to heart . Trowa was silent but not harsh in his quiet . He sat comfortably and even seemed to listen intently as Daniel rambled about different things . He answered questions Daniel asked with a way that made Daniel think he thought of every precise word like they were golden truths to be delved out to only a select few . Quatre had told him that Trowa had had amnesia like he did at one point and Daniel wanted to cling to that knowledge like it was a life saver . How did this boy in front of him , who Daniel knew had just as many terrors as he did , not go insane when he got his memories back ? " Wu , can I call my friend ? " he asked suddenly while they were reading their books still in Daniel 's room . The Chinese eyes looked at him calculating for a minute before reaching into his pocket of his jeans and passing a cell over . " Aw , thanks man ! " he almost squealed out just to annoy the other boy , but thought he 'd better not test his luck . He quickly dialed the number he had memorized . It only rang once before a frantic woman answered . " No , this is Daniel . Is Sam okay ? " he asked into the receiver . Wufei brought his attention up from the book he had gone back to . They stared at each other as Daniel heard Sam 's mom on the other end . " Sam is missing Daniel . He 's been missing for a week now . He never came home from school last Friday , " the woman sobbed . " I 'll call you when the police find anything , but they told me to keep the phone line clear . Please Daniel , pray for my son to return home . " The line went dead and Daniel felt his breathing and heart stop as he lowered the cell to the bed . " Sam is missing … he had to have been kidnapped … " Daniel felt the tears coming to his eyes while Wufei 's widened and then turned determined . The Chinese boy rushed out of the bedroom and left Daniel alone for the first time in weeks . " You didn 't have to . I saw him . I wanted to be dry for a bit and sat in some bushes near the house he is in . Didn 't seem that he wanted company , though , so I left him be . " " You have been in the clearing ? I heard no one can get into it . They try as hard as they might , but become lost and tangled in the over growth . " Lancelot also looked suspiciously at the rogue . Gwaine shrugged but didn 't give an answer . The steady beat of the rain began to increase as the drops became larger . They stood soaked looking at one another before the new comers to the group started to pull out rations and cloaks . Lancelot and Elyan worked together with little voice as they tied the cloaks over branches . Percival saw they were creating a tent and went to grab two large logs for them to sit on underneath . Gwaine took the reins of the horse to tie her to a branch on a tree close by as Guinevere was shuffled into the more comfortable new tent by Arthur . Leon collected money from everyone and set back to the village to buy more rations for their group . Once everyone was settled away from the loud patter of the falling water , Arthur spoke , " We won 't hurt Merlin . " Gwaine looked up from where he had been dumping water from his boots . " He was my friend before , and I don 't think I could ever see him executed . " Gwaine nodded and they all decided to get comfortable . Leon returned shortly with a pack full of more food rations and a thicker cloak for Guinevere . Lancelot answered him , " Before the purge , according to stories I had heard growing up , the high priestesses could conjure weather for an hour or so . A group of them could bring a significant storm . For one man to do this would mean he is more powerful than they were in the height of their day . " The silence pushed against them as they mulled over this . Arthur remembered the journals and the struggle he had read in them . He didn 't realize , though , that Merlin could ever be that strong . The skinny and pale physicians helper was more powerful than the king of Camelot . It sent chills down Arthur 's spine , and he fought the urge to panic . He chanted in his head over and over , ' Merlin is my friend . ' The courtyard was amass with people of all ages . The screams of children and weeping mothers assaulted her ears as she rushed from them all toward the main doors . She heard people say , " My lady , " as they bowed but she hadn 't the time to greet them . She needed to find out what was happening quickly . Her pace was determined as she strode into the council room where Lord Aggrevaine was bellowing , " I know what his Majesty 's request was , but we are running out of supplies ! " A few of the lords were still nodding as Morgana made her way to the man 's side . The lords all looked at her and bowed their heads as she turned onto the leader . " I obviously do ! " she pointed to the men with her finger in a sweeping motion as she continued , " When Arthur returns he will not be pleased to find we have forced a mutiny of the masses by starvation of their youth ! " She tossed her long dark hair aside as she came to stand next to the Lord , " Fix it Aggravaine ! " Her glare sent fear into the pit of all of the men . With her piece said she once again stormed through the castle . Outside the weather fumed with her . As she flowed down the stairs to the court yard , a clatter of shouts and hooves parted the sea of peasants . Two horses without riders came barreling toward the royal stables . Morgana brought her hands to her chest and her eyes widened in shock as a guard yelled out , " It 's the kings mount ! " |
Kosovo , a province of Southern Serbia , was incorporated into Yugoslavia in 1929 . Although granted autonomy in 1974 , the population demanded greater independence in 1990 , to which Serbia responded by imposing direct rule . This led to a conflict in 1996 between Serbian security forces and the Kosovan Liberation Army , a guerrilla group seeking independence from Yugoslavia . In 1998 , Slobodan Milosevic ordered Yugoslav forces to crush the 80 % ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo , escalating into a full scale war in 1999 and provoking NATO air attacks on Serbian targets . " It all started after the Bosnian war in 1995 , " Driton explained . " Serbia then turned on Kosovo and day by day it was getting worse . In 1999 when I was 17 , it literally broke loose . We were staying in our house but moving back and forth , back and forth . Somehow I managed to lose my mum and dad . When the war hit our village , my family ran one way and my uncle and I ran another . We went to the mountains . We couldn 't carry anything so we had literally nothing with us ; we just jumped in the car , drove it for about two miles and then had to dump it . " Driton and his uncle , Nezir , walked up into the mountains and lived there for two months , sneaking into the village at night to steal vegetables and flour . " It was February and it was freezing cold . We built shelters , but for the first two or three days we were sleeping in the snow . " The Serbians were working their way through the villages and forcing everyone up into the mountains . There were two or three thousand of us . Then the Kosovan Liberation Army came , so everyone got together and started running . It was like Saving Private Ryan ; we literally had to run for our lives . We spent a few days running - we didn 't know where , but whichever way the KLA came we 'd run in the opposite direction . The mountains were steep as hell and you 'd try and run but with bags of flour and vegetables on your back , and all you could hear were machine guns and bullets cracking , like firecrackers . There were loads of grenades dropping , literally every two minutes . Down on the ground , jump , down , jump . And we were starving too . There were mountain streams if you needed a drink , but I went about four days without eating . " After several days running without food or sleep , the civilians decided to surrender . " The tradition over there is that the men get together and talk . They decided we 'd hand ourselves in ; we had nowhere to go so we had to give up . " After forming a queue , the families began to walk in their thousands into the town . " Eventually we reached the main road between Pristina and Podujevo . The Serbians were absolutely good as gold , but little did we realise the UN warplanes were watching them like hawks so they couldn 't touch us . " The Serbian Army then forced the villagers to walk five miles into Pristina before carrying out the killings . " I 'll never forget this . There 's a house on a street all covered by trees , so at this point they started dividing people . Boys from 14 all the way up to 60 or 70 year - old men were put into a garden at the back of the house . All the women and children got separated from fathers , uncles , brothers . " That 's where I witnessed between five and 10 murders , and the beatings were constant . I don 't know what their strategy was , but they separated us in groups - it seemed to be by age and the look of people 's faces . I didn 't want to get separated from my uncle because he was all I had , but literally people were getting picked up and moved behind a shed . You 'd hear two bullets , and two policemen would come back but that person wouldn 't . " When it started to get dark , the survivors were loaded into buses and taken to the main police station in Pristina . " Just in front of the police station there were about 20 Serbian army officers . They were huge , and probably seemed even bigger to us because we hadn 't eaten - I was about seven and a half stone then , so I was half the size I am today . " The men were then forced to walk through two rows of troops in order to enter the building . " They started beating the hell out of us . My uncle walked through them and got beaten pretty horrendously . When he reached the top , the biggest man there kicked him back down to the beginning again so he had to go through again . They used weapons too ; anything that they came across . They did the same to everybody . When it was my turn , they kicked me so hard that literally everything came out and I crapped myself . But you can 't do anything about it . You just have to think : this is it , and the worst they can do is kill you . " Inside the police station , the men had to stand up with their hands on the table for a full 24 hours . " We 'd been running for the last four days and we were knackered ; all we wanted to do is sleep . I don 't know what happened to people who couldn 't manage to stand for that long but they got taken away and I never saw them again . " After 24 hours had passed , the Serbians packed the men into a hall and separated the men once more . At this point Driton lost Nezir . " I don 't know where he got taken , but the rest of us went to a private house . All I can remember is packed bags and children 's clothes . Then the men stormed the room and started kicking and beating us ; I think that was the worst beating I 've ever had . They put us against the wall and started shooting at us , like a shooting range . They were laughing their heads off . You could hear the shots ringing against the wall above your head . One of the guys from my village freaked out and tried to run . He was killed there and then . " Driton 's group were then taken to prison and interrogated about their knowledge of the KLA . " I was not into politics at all had no information to give . I was 17 ; I wasn 't interested in that sort of crap . " He was in prison for two months , sharing a cell around four metres square with 13 other men and enduring regular beatings and sleep deprivation . " I got interrogated about four times while I was there , but I was so tired I didn 't care . We were fed once a day , just stale bread that we dipped in water to soften up . At this point the UN were just flying about and bombing everywhere . " One day the prison guards just came and said , ' Mr Hoti , come with us ' . I didn 't know what was going on , but I couldn 't care less what happened at that point because I didn 't know whether my parents , sisters and brother were alive or dead . I started to be happy within myself ; I would entertain myself in my head . " They put me in the car and asked me if I spoke Serbian . I said no , and they turned some loud music on and started driving . It was May , and I hadn 't been outside for two months . I thought they were going to kill me , but the sun was so nice and hot I was just sitting in the back and smiling to myself . " Driton was transferred to Lipian , a bigger prison in Pristina . There , he was taken outside to a garden and lined up against the wall with 52 other men . " It was about 30 degrees . I come from the mountains so I wasn 't used to it . They left us there for hours ; people were collapsing and fainting all over the place . Then they put us in buses with boarded - up windows . We had to look at the floor with our hands behind our backs , and there were three or four policemen guarding us with machine guns . " Eventually the bus arrived at the Macedonian border , where the men were told to get off and start running . At the checkpoint , they were kept for seven hours until the UN arrived to let them through . " At that point I was the same , I was still blank . Some buses came and took us to a refugee camp around midnight . We were starving , like wild people . As soon as we reached the camp we just ate and ate . All the men that had been released , about 52 of us , started getting poorly because we hadn 't eaten for such a long time and then we 'd eaten loads . We were vomiting and had sickness and diahorrea . But there were doctors and you got taken care of . It was paradise . We had tents , we had food , and they gave us clothes - I 'd had the same clothes on since leaving home six months before . " Driton had an uncle living in Germany , who he contacted as soon as he arrived at the refugee camp . " I 'd always remembered his phone number , it was all I had . So on the first morning I was given a satellite phone and was told to call anyone I knew who lived abroad . I called my uncle and he was at work , but I spoke to his wife , Fatime . " I get a bit emotional on this part of the story . All I managed to say is ' I 'm in a camp ' , because I was literally so hysterical at that point that they took me away and drugged me to calm me down . I slept for 24 hours . Driton 's uncle passed on the news that his parents , sisters and brother were safe and well . " Because he was abroad he was acting as the middle man , so he was by the phone all the time waiting for news . Finding out my family were ok was a massive , massive excitement , but in my head I was still numb . I was still walking with my head down and hands behind my back like I was used to . " In the Macedonian camp , Driton was also reunited with a cousin , Behar , who had been studying in Pristina . " That was another of the best things that could have happened . Then the Red Cross or Unicef organised for all prisoners of war to go to England for medication . I wanted to go to my uncle 's in Germany but I was told I had to go to England first . I tried to get my cousin to come but he said no . " On the 12th June 1999 , Driton flew to Leeds - Bradford airport . " I was thinking : whoa , who are we to get looked after like this ? I was 17 and I 'd never been on a plane or seen a big tower building . When we arrived , everything was organised . It was ' come this way , come that way , we 'll do this for you ' . They gave us ID papers and put us into minibuses where we were taken to Savile Park in Halifax . " I was still numb when I came here . I didn 't know how to have friends ; I didn 't know how to laugh . I was in my head all the time , not talking to people . I was still unable to believe what was happening , and suspicious that something might go wrong . We were so frightened all the time that social services started bringing the police and army into the building for a game of football , to show that they were just normal people . " We were treated like kings . There was a doctor 's base and social services inside the centre . It was paradise . We didn 't have to cook and we were given chequebooks to get shopping and clothes - all I had was a pair of jogging pants I 'd been given in the Macedonian camp . It couldn 't get any better , we got given plenty . " For us to be able to get up and run about town and play football was amazing . In 1999 in Halifax I don 't think there were any Kosovans , and the locals were lovely . We 'd walk down the street and people would come out and say , ' Come here love , I 'll make you a cup of tea ' . " Before I came to Britain , I didn 't really have any opinion on British culture - I never expected to be here so it never crossed my mind . When I first arrived I really enjoyed having more freedom and seeing people acting as who they were , rather than having to act a certain way . Now I am used to the culture ; I feel part of it . I 've made lots of brilliant friends here , so generally I would say the British are good people . " Driton met his partner Jemma in a park near to the refugee centre just five days after he 'd arrived in Britain . " I was 15 , and we only hung around with them for entertainment value , " Jemma laughed . " They couldn 't speak English and we found it funny . " Before I met Driton and the rest of our friends I really didn 't know anything about refugees . When I heard there were some Kosovans moving into our area , I expected them to come from a place where everyone lived in mud huts and couldn 't afford to eat . Now I know the real stories and have experienced a taste of how they live for myself , I have a great deal of respect for the foreigners in our country and can completely understand why they are here . They just want some of the opportunities that we take for granted and expect for our children ; this is their only way . " Driton and Jemma became close friends and began a relationship in December 2000 . Despite his initial welcome , Driton told me that he has encountered some prejudice since coming to the UK . " When we first came , sometimes people stuck their fingers up at us in the park . But we didn 't know what it meant , so we 'd just smile and do the same , " he laughed . " We thought everyone was nice . I have had abuse , but it never hurts me . Every single person is entitled to their opinion . " Jemma is more critical , however . " People dislike refugees because they don 't understand the issues , and there is so much bad press . I think if people had more information there would be less of a problem . " The system stinks too . There 's no communication between different areas , there 's no compassion , and it seems nobody really cares whether they 're here or not . They 're just files locked away in a drawer , not people . " In 2006 , Driton was able to visit his family for the first time . His mother , father , brother , two sisters and extended family still live in the same village in Podujevo , about 23 miles from the capital Pristina . Driton didn 't share his story until he saw them in person , seven years after he 'd left . " We couldn 't talk about it on the phone , it was too hard . We 'd say , ' oh , next week . ' But then it 'd just be small talk again . " He found out his uncle Nezir had also been sent to prison . He was released on the day Driton boarded a plane for the UK . " I was on the plane and we could see the UN landing in Kosovo . They opened the prison and just told my uncle he was free , so he just walked and walked until he finally got home . " Now , you can feel the freedom , " he says of Kosovo . " Go where you want , do what you want . It was painful to go back at first , but it does get easier and easier . I took Jemma back to the place where we were beaten at the police station . I get emotional talking about it , but to go and see those places doesn 't affect me so much . " Three months after his arrival in the UK , Driton started college . He studied for four years , firstly English and Maths , then computing , and finally electrical installation . He is now a successful electrician and employs several people , as well as earning money from two rental properties . " The way I try to win my argument is to say I 've got my own family , house and job . I 'm not taking anything from you . I am very grateful to this country because I 've been given an opportunity to do what I want to do ; I 've been to college , I 've learned a language . I used to be 100 % Kosovan , but over time I 've become gradually more English . Now I don 't even think or dream in Kosovan . " In life you get good stuff and bad stuff . The last thing I want is sympathy . I don 't want people to read this and feel sorry for me ; I want them to realise that if I can do something with my life then anyone can . " " They came with the same ideology , so when they found a minority of Tutsis living in East Congo it was very hard for us , " Oli said . " They came to find the Rwandan refugees , and the massacres didn 't start straight away but there was a lot of fear and tension . At night nobody slept and you had to switch on the lights as if you were there . " My parents decided it was no longer safe to live there , so we moved to Burundi in 1996 when war broke out in the Congo . A lot of people died in those two years . People 's livelihoods and belongings were taken and cars and property stolen . " Despite a civil war between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi which began in 1993 , Oli explained he and his family felt safer there . " It was strange because Burundi was going through a war too , but there was a bit of law and order that didn 't exist in the Congo . In the Congo , there was a lot of rape and child abuse . " We lived in Burundi for ten years , but with so many wars going on and a culture of warlords the militias became very powerful , crossing the border to recruit young people . So when I got to 11 or 12 , they started trying to recruit me . They knew where the Tutsis were living and at that age they thought we were fit to be in the army . " The militias think they own you . They brainwashed people and asked them what they were doing , living a comfortable life while others were fighting . They were pretending to protect Tutsis , but we were recruited to kill other Tutsis . People who joined were seen as betrayers , but sometimes they were recruited by force . " Being a Christian it was very hard for me . I could not join the army or kill anyone ; I believe you can fight battles in other ways . There was a gentleman I was working with in the ministry who believed in me , and he persuaded me to leave in 2006 . " The Minister paid for Oli 's passage to the UK , something he is eternally grateful for . " I 've been lucky , I know where my family live . My friend Germaine [ another Congolese refugee living in Leeds ] doesn 't know where his wife and children are , or even if they are alive . " Oli flew to London , where he was taken to a refugee induction centre before being driven to Liverpool . " It 's like someone delivering goods somewhere . You sit in the back , there 's no talking . You don 't get told where you 're going . I thought everyone was going to be like that , I was very cautious . My first impressions weren 't good - when they were taking my fingerprints they were wearing gloves and avoiding me , then washing their hands as if I had a disease . It was a very tough day . I thought , ' no . I don 't think I 'll survive this place ' . " " I hadn 't been in the UK for long when I met Ed , so hadn 't had opportunities to develop meaningful contact or friendship with people here . I had , and still have , a double perception of British people : some as very conservative , closed and unfriendly , but others as open , friendly , and good humoured . Ed helped me get involved in lots of really good social projects , to learn a lot about British culture , and meet so many people . I 've grown a lot , developed my English , and I 've been involved with peace work in Israel and Palestine . " Oli saw it as a challenge he wanted to take on . " I thought , ' Let me go kick some butt ' , " he laughed . " I moved there in February this year , and so far so good - I 've never had big problems . It was scary at election time though because there were BNP leaflets coming through the letterbox and guys putting posters up in the streets . I was glad when that was over . " According to Ed , if anyone can make it as an ambassador for multiculturalism it 's Oli . " He talks to his neighbours and says hello and smiles at people at the bus stop ; he thinks Britain is the most welcoming place ever . He 's very open , funny , charming and gracious . He 's the kind of person someone in a challenging , white area in Leeds would get to know and think , ' well I don 't like asylum seekers , but Oli 's alright ' . " I think people gravitate towards their own and don 't engage with anyone with different lifestyles . But it 's really stimulating meeting people who are very different . A lot of my refugee friends are really remarkable people who have been through a whole load of grief , so the perception that I want to question in the media is that they are spongers - that 's really not the case . For a lot of them the whole benefits culture is completely alien . And they really want to work , not because they want to take our jobs but because it seems like the normal thing to do . We have to not just tolerate refugees but gain something from them . We don 't have all the answers in this country . " Oli agreed , saying when he arrived in the UK he was shocked to see a white man begging . " Every society has its forgotten people and its scapegoats to blame for all the bad things . I thought Britain was the perfect society . I thought all Brits were very wealthy because of the Westerners we see in Africa . " " Africa is potentially rich but we lack education . Getting on with life and dealing with hardship is part of the deal of being African : we 're fatalists . I didn 't just flee the Congo , I fled the whole region . It 's not even safe for me to go and visit . " Now , I feel like life 's just started again . Living here makes me wish my own country could be like that . Africa is in a dark tunnel and I hope that one day it can be like Britain . " Sahande Jamal , 30 , came to the UK from Iraq in 2001 . He lives in Manchester with Sarah Peters , 53 , who he refers to as his adoptive mother . They asked that we change their names to protect them . " Being a Kurd I was a second class citizen and the regime under Saddam was very harsh . During the Anfal campaign there was a lot of ethnic cleansing . People disappeared and were never seen again until the mass graves were discovered . People were killed and arrested all the time - a lot of my friends were , and I knew that I would be next to be put in prison or executed . It 's like your name is on a blacklist . " As well as learning English in Iraq , Sahande studied politics and sociology , and says he was a target because of his involvement with student activism . " I was forced to leave the country because of my political views . I 've always been very active ; I still am . I encouraged people to oppose the regime and say we need democracy , human rights and education . I had to flee . " Sahande raised some money and organised for human traffickers to help him leave Iraq . " We had to pay a lot of money to the agents . It 's difficult for women to leave the country , which is why most of the [ UK - based ] Kurdish community are young men . We crossed into Iran , but I was still very scared because in Iran and Turkey it 's the same - they don 't like Kurdish people . " In Iran , Sahande was arrested . " They came for us in the night . It was really serious , because we didn 't have any documentation . I wasn 't expecting them to let us go . But the agents paid a lot of money so we could escape . They are very clever and have connections . So without us knowing , they paid the money to the commander who was in charge of the prison . " One night , it was just getting dark , and they said to us , ' we 'll let you go and transfer you to a different prison ' . But we were put in cars and taken to the border between Iran and Turkey . In Iran if you have a lot of money you can do whatever you want to , because it 's very , very corrupt . We walked across the border and the agents paid for us to be released . " In Turkey , we were tired and dirty so they knew we were foreign . They stopped us and asked for documentation but we didn 't have any . That night in the prison , the commander came . He knew we were Kurdish , and he started torturing us - me and two other men I was travelling with . After that , I pretended I was a gypsy , because in Iran and Turkey gypsies don 't have any documents either . They believed me because I have marks on my body like gypsies do in that part of the world , so they let me go . I was lucky because otherwise I could have been locked up for life . " Sahande 's agents helped him to escape in a lorry going to Dover , where he spent a few weeks in a refugee camp . " When I arrived , the people were very friendly . Even the police officers - we 're not used to that . We got help to find a solicitor and to arrange various appointments . " After induction they dispersed us , and I was sent to Salford in the middle of the night . The immigration service let me in the house and left me there . At the beginning it was very difficult ; I did not know anyone and I felt very isolated . I didn 't know where I was . Being an asylum seeker is like you are born again . You are a man , but you feel like a child who does not know anything . I thought the accommodation provider would come back , but he didn 't , and I was very lonely . I didn 't go out for days in case it was illegal for me to step outside . But bit by bit , I learned that it doesn 't work like that ; Britain is a democracy , you have freedom . To me , there is no discrimination here . After settling in , Sahande began to make new friends . " My health visitor was wonderful . I got to know her and she took me to college , even though it was not her job to help me so much . I trusted her a lot and she introduced me to Sarah , who volunteered to do an hour a week 's English conversation and learning with me . We talked about politics , culture , our families , and about how British systems work , and soon it was three times a week that we met , not one . " He was a bit jittery when I met him , " Sarah said . " I didn 't know much about refugees apart from what you read in the papers ; I knew nothing about Kurdish people at all and nothing about the asylum system . I was appalled at how people are left in a strange place to fend for themselves , and how difficult the system was to understand . " Now , I 'm so proud of him and how he 's grown as a person , " Sarah said . " Five years ago he didn 't know anything . Now he has a degree , he works in a job helping asylum seekers and runs a community group . I have learned so much about Kurdistan and have enjoyed the food , the dancing and the culture he has introduced to my life . He calls me mum and I call him my son , its easier that way to explain our relationship . " Sahande is now in contact with his biological mother . " I visited her in Kurdistan after six years apart . There are still many problems there , which was sad for me . I told her a little bit of my story and she started crying , so I had to stop . It 's really difficult to talk about . " She is very happy that I have found someone who cares for me , and when I talk to her on the telephone she asks : ' How is your mum ' , and is grateful for Sarah 's role in my life . They are very similar . When I go back to Kurdistan next time , they have insisted Sarah comes with me . " I work voluntarily and I also pay my taxes . People are people , there 's good and bad in all . Some refugees might take more than they give , but most I know are working legally and making a contribution to British society . " I didn 't have much background knowledge of Britain or British culture before I came here , but gradually I became integrated . I am really grateful for all the services I 've received and all the new friends I have made . You have to be sociable and outgoing when you 're in a country with no family . Britain is a good country with good people . " In 2005 , Togo 's President , Gnassingbe Eyadema , who had ruled Togo as a one - party state for most of his 37 years in power , died from a heart attack . Under Togolese constitution , the speaker of parliament , Fambare Ouattara Natchaba , should have become his successor . Natchaba was out of the country and the Togolese army took the opportunity to close the borders and stage a Coup D ' Etat , placing the former President 's son in power . Mass opposition to this takeover led to civilian riots and a massacre by Government troops . " Everybody protested , everybody , " said Mimi . " We couldn 't believe that the President was in power for such a long time and then when he died , his son took over . We couldn 't understand why , and that 's when the problems began . " Everybody in Togo was killing people , women were abused . It was a real mess , and people ran away everywhere . You don 't know where you 're going , people fled from Togo to Ghana , Burkina Faso or Benin . The new president was begging people to come back , but we couldn 't trust him because we knew he was just like his father . It was very difficult . " " We don 't have democracy in Africa because everybody 's corrupt . I don 't know about politics , but I was involved because my boyfriend was . Ten men came to my house to catch him , but he wasn 't there . It was about midnight and I was asleep . I didn 't know anything about the situation , where he was , or why they had come . I told them , ' he 's not here , ' but they said I had to tell them . I kept saying I didn 't know , and that 's when I was arrested and treated very badly . " It 's very stressful and painful to talk about . When I think or talk about it I can 't sleep for days . I went to prison and I was abused and raped by the chief . I spent a week lying on the floor and only had stale bread to eat ; sometimes fish . It was the chief who raped me who helped me to leave Togo . I don 't know why . I was put in the back of a rubbish truck , it was very scary and I didn 't know where I was going . " When we stopped , I was told we were in Ghana . I was dirty , I was bleeding , I was tired , hungry and poorly . I said to someone , ' take me to a church ' . And I was lucky because people were there . I was crying and asking to see the pastor . When the pastor came to see me he comforted me without a word and took me back to his house . He didn 't ask me anything because I was tired and scared and ill . " His wife did everything for me ; changed me and took me to bed , gave me medicine . The pastor only tried to speak to me after a few days . I told him my story and people from the church came every day to pray for me . While I was staying with him , I never opened the door to go out because I thought the police might catch me and take me back . But I was just lucky . The pastor paid for Mimi to come to England after a month . " He helped me - I don 't know how , because he organised everything . I don 't know why ; it must have been charity . He saved my life and I can 't repay him . How can I repay him ? I just pray . " In my country I was very happy , I worked as a masseuse and healer , making and selling Chinese medicine . I was looking after people . In Africa we have lots of troubles and people don 't have money , but my remedies were cheap and natural so they helped a lot of people . I was surprised when I came to Britain that when I feel pain now I have to go to a GP . I don 't want that - in Africa I never went to a GP ; I know what I can do by myself . If someone had fever I 'd collect plants and herbs and make medicines . " When I came here and they asked me where I 'd like to live I told them anywhere , as long as I have the churches . In Leeds there are many churches . I chose one and people are very kind and friendly there . They support me and look after me ; they love me and I love them . " Sometimes I cry at night wondering why they help me so much , what have I done to deserve their help ? They pray for me , they give me support all the time . So I know English people are friendly . The only difference is In Africa we are open ; we share everything . Neighbours talk to each other . Here , I was lonely at first . I didn 't see my neighbours for three months and it surprised me . " I found all my friends at church . They tell me I can call them anytime , even one o ' clock in the morning . So now I think : ok , I will have to be useful . That 's why I 'm here , to help people . " I am a business woman , and if I was in France where they speak my language , it would be so much easier and I could do many things . But in England there 's a language barrier . English people speak very fast . So I started using my TV to learn , reading a lot and going to college . It 's amazing to me that I can speak , read and write the language now . I never thought that I would travel in my life . " Mimi cannot return to Togo and does not know where her boyfriend is . " He can 't be there because they would have killed him , " she said . " Today I don 't know how I feel . God saved me , he saved my life . So when I came here I wanted to learn new skills , improve my language and work with asylum seekers . I am able to do many things , I just need training . I would like to work ; I applied for jobs but I don 't have the experience . " The Jobcentre sent Mimi to volunteer at the Refugee Council in Leeds and she is now building a new life and feeling positive . " I am happy to be here . Really happy . This Government saved my life . And that 's why I want to be useful . And I know in England I have many opportunities and I pray for that every day : to find the right way and something I want to do . I want to help other people . My dream is to help children around the world , especially orphans . I want to do charity work , that 's my dream . I 'm looking forward to my future ; I think everything will be fine . I 'm here to help . " |
Where to start ? Has it been only three weeks since I last wrote ? So many emotions - up and down and unbelievable and blessed and crazy . I doubt that anyone would ever believe me . I am feeling very confused right now . When I last wrote I decided to trust in God and give Bob my journal . It was the only thing that made sense to me at the time . There must be a purpose to all these Godwinks or the other alternative was that I was not in my right mind . Sitting on my balcony I reread the journal from beginning to end and strongly felt that I must have written this for Bob . What else were all these sychronicities between the two of us about ? As soon as I closed the book , I looked up in the sky , which was clear blue , not a cloud in sight when a small shower rained directly on a pear tree outside my balcony . How is this possible I thought ? This must be a sign for me . I trust in these signals but sometimes I think maybe I have been missing something ? So I continue to look and time after time I have been reaffirmed that I am most definitely not just imagining things . I have chosen this direction and would never want to go back . Whenever I start to waiver and feel insecure I am blessed with another sign . It has been raining Godwinks for me . Where all this is to lead I do not know but I have been given many hints . So many thoughts are going through my head . I have to write some of them down so I can move ahead . I am a little overwhelmed . After seeing the rain shower I was eager to show Bob my journal and lost any fear of what he would think of me . When he called that evening I suggested he come over . I was impatient for him to read it . I felt strongly that we had some special purpose . I was also thinking that perhaps I had an answer to his financial problems . He could buy his house from his ex and we could live there doing whatever it was that we were meant to do . This is what I thought would happen and is still yet to be seen . Things are never that simple and not without surprises . Instead we arranged to see each other the next day . He was picking up his new car which he happened to purchase a few blocks away from where I work . He wasn 't sure what time he would get it . I waited for his call the next day , and of course , once again his call comes in as soon as I flip my cell phone open , just as I knew it would . This now happens on a regular basis , almost like I have control of it ? Bob tells me he would be able to pick me up around five thirty . His Dad was driving him to the dealership and they live a few blocks from where I work . Bob grew up in this area so he is familiar with many of the same places I am . Maybe this is one of those coincidences that are just coincidences but I doubt it . There are just so many connections between the two of us that it defies statistics . I 'm too tired to write anymore . Maybe I need a break from all this ? Oh , a vacation or going to the cottage would be great right now . I am supposed to go to Blue Mountain with Bob next weekend . I feel emotionally drained , in a good way . Tried getting on the internet in the morning but the lines must be down . Just tried using my land line and it is also not working . So I used my cell to call Bob . There was no answer on his cell and for the first time ever I called his home number but I cannot get a connection ? I left Bob a message on his cell asking him if could explain why this would possibly happen ? To continue yesterday 's entry … . . Bob called around six thirty , saying he shouldn 't be long . I heard from him again around seven and he tells me " you are not going to believe this but I locked my keys in the car . This is the third time I have had a new car and something like this has happened . " Ha , ha God winks playing jokes on him too . It felt like such a long day . I had been anticipating his reaction to what I wanted to tell him and thinking of nothing else . I was eager to get away from work so I decided to go to the park and wait for him there . I am sitting on a park bench when he calls around seven thirty . Once again it is a call that comes in just as I open my cell . CAA came and unlocked his door . He now has the keys and is on his way . I tell him to pick me up at the park . " Which park " he asks , " Did you pass some condos under construction and is there a church beside them ? " " Yes " , I say . " Well isn 't that just appropriate - this is the church where I got married " . I go to the street and watch him coming towards me in his impressive new sports car . He looks so excited . When he gets out I see his hands are trembling . He shows me every gadget that there is . To be honest , I am a little bored . We discuss what we want to do for dinner . At this point I really wanted him to go straight to my house as I was eager to show him the journal in order to get on with what ever is suppose to happen next . However , he insisted on taking me out for dinner . We decide to go to an Italian restaurant nearby . It was a magical evening . The weather was perfect . There was live music . Every song the singer sings is a favourite one of mine . Even though I 'm enjoying myself I can 't wait to get home thinking that Bob will read the journal and everything will fall magically into place . I even took the following day off in anticipation of all the planning we would be doing . Well that 's not what happened . After arriving at my apartment , I left Bob outside on the balcony while I got something for us to drink . I had purposely left the journal open on the balcony table for him to see . He was well aware that there was something I wanted to give him and I figured he would put two and two together . As I am filling our glasses I hear " Oh no . What 's this ? " So I tell him that it 's the surprise I mentioned and to go ahead and read it . Well the damn bastard would not read it . This scenario had never entered my mind . Bob seemed a little uncomfortable . All he could do was talk about anything else and especially his new car . He did not want to be out of eyesight of his car and was also worried about getting a ticket . We went out for a walk not far from his car . He did say at one point it wasn 't good timing about the journal . My thoughts were running the gamut . I think perhaps he doesn 't have to read it , he already knows what 's going on . Well I was brought back down to earth when he left . I couldn 't believe he was actually leaving without reading my journal . I lied in bed imagining he was coming back . When he didn 't I called him . He wouldn 't pick up his phone despite my many attempts so I left him some funny messages . Early the next morning he called just to make sure I knew that he really did have to get up early . So I just left the journal to rest . I would just have to wait and see . Maybe I am too impatient and need to learn some patience ? The week after was pretty normal . Nothing stands out . It was the week before the Karaoke Party ( July 16th ) . Bob had told me that he wouldn 't be able to make it as he was going away on business in Montreal and then taking a short vacation in Quebec . I asked him what his plans were while he was in Montreal as co - incidentally I would also be there on business during this time . I was hoping that we could get together . He was very vague . I try not to feel hurt when he does not include me in his life . However his plans since have changed and now he isn 't going until after the weekend so he would be in Toronto for the Karaoke party but as his son was taking him out for Father 's Day he wouldn 't be able to attend . I told him I would really like it if he could make it . I wonder why he can 't just reschedule with his son ? After all is has been a month since Father 's Day . I didn 't want him to feel bad and did hope they could get together , but on some other day . I felt it would be special if I was with him July 16th because that is my day of the year that so often something meaningful has happened to me . Unexpectedly , the Friday before the party he called to tell me he could make it after all . It was a perfect evening . Most of the evening was spent up on my balcony listening to my friends singing below and enjoying each other 's company . Bob and I were told we were unsociable the next day and yes we were . It still irks me that this should bother anyone . The next day Bob and I spent lounging . He had to leave around two because he had plans to visit his father in law . There was something he wanted to bring him or as he said " believe me I do not want to leave . " This would be the only time I would see him in the next 10 days . His plans were set and he was meeting his business friends in Ottawa instead of Montreal and was going to Tadousak to see the whales . So there went my dream of him and I spending a night in Montreal together . This happened to be the best thing because I would not have had a relaxed time . Too many things happening with work Oh , now I remember a few things that happened during this period . How could I forget ? The reason for my trip to Montreal was to attend " cultural training " on how to handle the East Indians who were coming overseas and would be doing our computer programming . It was an absolute joke - a cruel one I thought . Half of my team of eight are from India or of East Indian descent . The Quebec group had gone the previous week and said it was useless but funny . East Indians evidently , according to these consultants , don 't like to joke or be touched . They also warned us that we may have communication issues and that they do not like to take directions from women . Anyway the whole thing pissed me off royally . There is some V . P . that makes very bad decisions . I don 't even want to know who he is . This is happening during a very stressful , crucial part of our project and here they are adding the stress of travelling and we won 't even be working with any of the East Indian crew to begin with . Anyway I have ranted about it enough . It still makes my blood boil . Another coffee and cigarette . . . I am feeling a little anxious … something is happening . My phone and internet still are not working ? I had planned to see my parents while in Montreal as I had not seen them since Christmas . I asked my boss , Dave , if I could have a vacation day as I had planned to visit my family and then would meet up with the group . On the Monday of that week Faisal , my co - worker , was to give a presentation in Montreal . He was acting very strange the Friday before . I asked him if he was tired . He looked very haggard . The morning Faisal was to give his presentation , Mark comes upstairs and I overhear him telling Dave that Faisal has not shown up . No phone call , nothing . I hear rumblings during the day . Faisal is missing . Not one of my team members says anything but I know we all fear many things . Perhaps he is dead lying in a ditch somewhere , I think . It was worrisome . Finally , at the end of the day , Dave comes to us and says if anyone asks about Faisal that we are to say he has some personal issues he needs to look after . I am slightly shaken . I know now that it is serious enough that his parent 's are picking him up . But I don 't know what happened . I was later to find out that Faisal had a breakdown . He is still in the hospital the last I heard . I went home that evening upset . I blamed this on the undue stress that Management is putting on employees ; for example , needlessly sending us off to those crazy workshops . I had a couple of drinks , which has been the case most days this past week and sent Dave an email saying I 'm sure we all feel the same about what happened to Faisal and I was willing to get some conversations going with my fellow coworkers to complain to management . Also , I told Dave that he was a good boss , as I am sure he felt some responsibility about this , and Dave is a good boss . Perhaps that maybe instead of looking at it as if Faisal fucked up that there was undue stress put on him and he cracked under the pressure . Maybe this would shake the people up at the top that are making so many ridiculous decisions and not backing out of them because of their pride ( EGO ! ! ! ) . Anyway nothing has come of it but Dave did thank me for sending that email . So I arrived at work on the Tuesday and Dave is surprised to see me . " I thought you were going to visit your parents ? I told him I was going that evening . " Oh that 's a fast visit " he says . Then I look at my ticket and realize the workshop is on Wednesday not Thursday . I wonder why I get dates so mixed up lately . So I asked Dave instead of a full day off if I could get half a day and I book a flight for Montreal at 1 : 00 p . m . The traffic was horrendous and I arrived at the airport at 1 : 00 and didn 't get on a plane until 3 : 00 . I had a great visit with my family . Roger , Louise my Mom and Dad and I went to our favourite Thai restaurant for dinner . Adam and Andrew were in from Toronto on their first trip ever by themselves visiting my other nephews , Christopher and Steven . When I walked in the door the boys all ran to me and hugged me and told me that they loved me . I 'm feeling a little anxious right now . Something definitely is strange with my phone and internet problems . Called Bell and was told they are not related . I called Janet on my cell . Strange that I couldn 't get though to Bob 's house ? Something is odd here . The following day I met up with my team at the airport and we went to Boucherville to attend our so called cultural training . It was worse then I even thought it would be . I tried to make light because in the whole big scheme of things it is one of the lesser , harmful things going on , I suspect . Actually it was quite comical and gave me an opportunity to let these people know what I think about their duplicitous way of making a buck . We head back to the airport . The guys are extremely tired . Chris had been moving into his new home the day before and had hardly any sleep and Dave had to wake up at 3 : 00 a . m . to make this ever so important workshop . When we are at the airport security gates who do I see standing right in front of me , but my sister 's best friend , Lisa . I have not seen her in months . We looked at each other . . . what are the chances of running into the person that you have just made a surprise 40th birthday scrapbook for in line at the airport ? She kissed me and told me how much she loved the book . I told her what a pleasure it was for me to do it . We all decided to go for a drink and nearly missed our plane because of it . When we finally looked at the time we saw the plane was due for takeoff in 5 minutes . But it ended up being delayed so we didn 't have to have new tickets reissued and have to explain the additional cost . I am feeling confident . Finally this project is going well , or so I thought . Lots of time to really analyze what would be the best solution for my Manage Marketing Offer use case . I worked on my presentation for my case that Thursday and Friday . I show it to Dave , asking if I am on the right track . Yes , he says . Good . I was planning on taking a few days off the following week and was looking forward to going to Carol and Jim 's cottage with my family . Dave didn 't say anything when I asked for the time off , but he also didn 't officially approve it ? I sent an email to him requesting the time off officially . Still I didn 't get a reply so I had just assumed everything was ok . I took the train out to Montreal on Wednesday evening . Had a great trip and met a man who I immediately connected with and talked to openly and honestly . He is responsible for designing CIBC Flagship branches in Canada . Design is a big interest of mine and his so we hit it off right away . Our conversation got deeper and deeper and we talked about life and politics . He mentioned to me how much he hates Bush . Anyway we didn 't stop talking the whole train ride . When we were nearing Montreal he pointed out how beautiful the scenery was . " Look at the moon " it was a full moon rising over over the St . Lawrence River and it was awesome to me , so beautiful . I left the train feeling very good to have had a special evening with a stranger . The next day Dave and I drove to the office and I was still feeling confident about my workshop . No jitters at all … how I have changed … I use to be afraid to say my name in group situations and now I was leading one and not nervous . I go through my workshop feeling confident . The group has some interesting conversations and debates and I am made aware of some of the challenges I will have . I feel I have plenty of time to work on these and I do not foresee any problems . I know there is still a lot of work to do before August 22nd to get it approved . When Dave and I were driving back to the hotel he asked me if I wasn 't busy that evening if I would like to go to dinner with him and we could discuss the project some more . We ended up at a restaurant across the street and had an enjoyable dinner together . This was the first time we had gotten an opportunity to really talk to each other . We talked very little about work but a lot about life . He told me about some of the amazing coincidences that have happened in his life . One special one I recall had toIn Dave 's house , in the basement there is a miniature train set that travels though little villages and was built by his father in law . Its Dave 's dreams to one day get it up and running again . Of course it 's very special to them , a memento left by his wife 's dad . Dave mentions the train set to his new friend . The man tells him that when he was a young teenager he knew a man who had a train set like that . And doesn 't it turn out that he was a very good friend of Dave 's wife 's father and had helped him put the train set and village together . Now what are the chances of that ! Well I have taken to drinking wine in the morning now . Where I am headed has been disconcerting to me . Right now wine is the only thing getting me through all these feelings . Now on with my story . The ending isn 't quite as happy as I had hoped it would be . The last week has been a little lost . I 'm drinking wine from a coffee cup . Disgusting I know but I wouldn 't want someone to walk in and see me nipping in the morning . People are worried about me enough . The next day I held my second workshop . I think it goes well . There is some resistance to some inane things . I still feel we are making progress and I have lots of time to get everything ironed out . At the end of the day , Geoff , the guy who is responsible for the technical part of our use case asks me if we can meet after the workshop . There are some things he wants to go over with me . I ask him how he thinks everything is progressing and he says " Horrible " . I knew there were still some decisions to make . . . but … then I look at the date on his project list and see the due date for project . It says July 27th . " Odd " I say , " mine says August 22nd ? Well the pieces fell together . I am supposed to be going to the cottage next week for a few days and my project is due that Wednesday . At that point I didn 't even want to look into it . Geoff was very sympathetic and told me a story about how he recently screwed up a date for a concert he had been looking forward to seeing for over a year . I very much like Geoff . He has been helping me ever since . One piece of advice he did offer me was that when you are working intently and feeling tired you can regain your strength by doing something opposite . I told him how I liked art and how I could get lost in it . He showed me a web site about Mandellas . They are patterns within patterns in many different colours . How I want to get my feeling back for art and try one of these . The next day Saturday , working from home , I notice I do not have my mouse with me . I am frustrated now but I will try to muddle through . I log into the system at work . I decide to try my mouse from my other computer . Doesn 't work either . Then I get booted out of the system at work on my laptop so I decide to try to connect from my home computer . Doesn 't work either . It 's impossible to do spreadsheets , graphs , etc . without a mouse . Believe me , I tried . I was so totally frustrated that I decided to have a glass of wine during the afternoon . I don 't know why but that weekend on and off I had this feeling of extreme sadness . Weeks are getting a little mixed up . That weekend I decided to go to Harbour Front with Debbie , Margaret , Louise and Val . We had an enjoyable time . The next day Debbie and Andrew had us for dinner . Inside I was still feeling unsettled . There were other incidences that happened that week that I nearly forgot about . I turned on my computer one day while Bob is away on his vacation and my whole desk top changes . On it are picture of his artwork in his bedroom that mysteriously appeared . These are beautiful little signals but maybe I am not reading them correctly ? The Monday prior to going to Montreal my family came over to my place for dinner . Mom , Dad , Brian , Jim , Roger and Louise ( in from Montreal and the first visit to my place ) Janet , and my Auntie Donna and Uncle Don from Vancouver . I was happy to see my aunt and uncle relaxing and having a good time . They have had a stressful time lately . We had a lot of laughs . I even walked to the bus stop with them in my pyjamas along with my Mom , Dad and Janet . They took pictures of me . Sometimes I feel you have got to act silly . When we got back to the apartment I mentioned to Janet how happy I was with how my relationship was going with Bob . Pshhh … or whatever she says but obviously she thinks I am getting into some kind of trouble . Well of course my back went up . I told her about all the coincidences between Bob and I and how I felt they meant something . For some strange inexplicable reason this topic of conversation brought up fear and disbelief with both her and my father . I felt that I was being put down by both of them . Why was it that Janet couldn 't believe that there are unexplainable events in life that happen to everyone ? She has had her own occurrences and one of her best friends talks to angels , literally . I believe her and so does Janet . So why can Janet not believe me ? My Mom said something today that may make some sense ? Everyone misses the old Lisa . The one who kept her mouth shut about everything . I told my Mom this old Lisa was gone and I was happy she was because she kept quiet about so many things that hurt her in order that people would not worry . My life is much more secure now then it has ever been with Doug . I had found my voice . So the following week at work I went into Steve 's office ( he is the head of the project in Toronto ) and ate crow - even though I didn 't have to . Steve met with everyone that day to go over the progress of our case . I was told actually I am ahead of the game compared to everyone else and was given an extension . That week I also came across an EGO . Someone who was given too much power and can not handle it properly . Dealing with this ego all week had my blood boiling by Friday . He is a typical example of someone who if not contained can wreck havoc in the workplace . The one thing I can not tolerate in people is when they use power for their own means or ego . So I left work early . Bob had left me an email message the evening before asking me to pack my bag , as we would be spending Friday night at his house . I didn 't get this message until I was at work because my home computer was still not working properly . Regardless , I definitely wanted to go home first before going to his place in order to pick up my journal that explained what I thought about our relationship , Godwinks and all . I was feeling a little leery now to show him as he ignored it the last time . The reason why he did not want to read it was weighting on my mind . This had to be right … so many Godwinks . Also , I felt this would be good for Bob 's ego and perhaps give him a possible solution to his financial situation . What a fool I was . Thinking I could help him with his financial problems and he could keep his house , which he loved . Honestly , I have thought about living with Bob . Yes of course I would like a partner . However , I don 't think I could be happy to live with all his choices . My surroundings are very important to me and the thought of living in the house where he and his wife lived for many years , the more I think about it , would have been a huge mistake . Anyway here goes . Bob picks me up at my house . Before we leave he decides to see if he can fix my mouse problems . It is really screwed up . I think I yanked it out in my frustration and broke it . I let him fool around and went and had a cigarette outside . All I am thinking about is what his reaction to my journal will be . Lately I seem to be able to control funny little things with my mind . It has happened on more than one occasion with computer malfunctions . I just will it to work and as soon as I have this thought it does . Unfortunately it doesn 't work all the time . But it is uncanny when it does happen . It happens that day . I walked into the office area and say to myself the problem will be fixed and voila just as I enter the room the problem is solved . Bob sees the pictures of his bedroom that mysteriously appeared on my desktop . He asks me how come I have these pictures . Another Godwink I am thinking but I do not say anything . We went to his house and got some take out Japanese … lemon grass soup , sushi , shrimp and vegetable tempuras , teriyaki chicken , a feast . My mind though is not on the food but still stuck on giving him my journal . For some strange reason I felt compelled to give this journal to him . I now had few worries that I would be rejected , or that this wasn 't the right time . I thought that Bob would be nothing other than flattered after he read it . It was quite obvious he didn 't want to but I insisted anyway . So we read part of it together and laughed at my silliness . He said it was sweet . I still can 't understand why I think this is so special and he doesn 't . That is what is hurting me right now . This should have been a sign to me that I am not . Of course , I 'm not because the next day when we continued with the journal , after coaxing from me , what he did say to me when he finished was that he could not say he loved me . That love for him came with a lot of obligations . He discounted all the synchronicities when I brought them up . He said perhaps I was reading them wrong . Then what do they mean ? I felt hurt . I also now feel that I have been very wrong about what Godwinks are meant for . I fell asleep that evening feeling upset . I had dreams of soldiers in armoury and everything I am going through mixed in together . The following day turned to be enjoyable despite my upset . In some ways things are now out in the open . I am hurt by some of the things he said and because for the first time in my life I opened my heart and most intimate thoughts to someone and they rejected it . During the day Bob says he is busy the following morning and will have to take me home that evening . I had an emotional day with him . I did some crying but for the most part controlled my feelings . Bob was very kind . We talked a lot and I put most of my hurt in the background . But I was and still am feeling insecure . I opened up everything to him . I felt rejected . During the day he asked me why I felt hurt . Was it because he could not say he loved me ? Then he told me about the guilt he had for having had so many affairs . How this was so difficult for him . It had nothing to do with me but with his past . When we went back to my apartment he talked my ear off about many of his inventions . So everything should have been ok . But inside I was not feeling ok . I know the right way to have handled this would be just let it lie . But I have not done that too many times in my life . So now we come to this week . The week when it all came crashing down on me . The week of I told you so 's and see what happens when you follow God . It is dangerous . You are playing with things you are not meant to play with . Has it only been a week since the craziness stopped ? So much once again has happened in one small period of time . I have a feeling this will be a very long entry but an important one . Where to start ? It has been two weeks since I last wrote but the 1st one is a little sketchy in my mind . I spent a lot of it drinking and calling Bob . After writing my last entry my parents and Auntie Donna and Don came over . I was trying very hard to look normal and not upset . I kept up the charade for most of the day and managed to enjoy their visit . I had made a spaghetti sauce the day before . We had dinner and more wine . During the evening I had a strong urge to call Bob so I did as I so often do acted impulsively and called him on his cell phone . The conversation was hurtful from what I can remember on both sides . I remember telling him I was hurt especially when he started talking about me buying a condo . It felt like he was saying that our relationship would never go anywhere . I remember him saying that he was hurt that I said that he was unable to leave his wife . I have known Bob for nearly 2 years now and the divorce is still not final but mostly I think because she would not let go of him . They both still live in the same house . I wasn 't very understanding . He asked me to give him time to muddle through this . I didn 't . I also asked him if he was blocking my calls on his phone at the house . It is still quite hard for me to understand how the telephone situation works and even if it is possible to block calls . Why did my calls not go through to his home ? The only possible explanation was that my number was blocked and this meant that he did not trust me . In the entire time of knowing him I never called his home until the recent events . He did not reply and eventually hung up on me . My internet and land phone were still not working so I used my cell and repeatedly kept trying . I should have left Bob alone . But destiny is destiny and I would not be where I am now if I did not follow this course . During this emotional conversation my Mom walked into my bedroom to tell me my Aunt and Uncle were leaving . I asked her to please get out of my room because it was not a good time for me to talk . I was upset . She wouldn 't leave so I told her about giving Bob my journal , and the Godwinks . She became very concerned . They were suppose to leave the next day and were trying to insist that I go with them . I tried to convince them that I was ok . They spent the next day with me and I acted as normal as possible . I was still feeling pain because I knew Bob and I were through . I didn 't want to think about my broken heart while they were around . I didn 't want to go back to a job that was driving me crazy . It was a job I should never have taken in the first place . My therapist once told me that going back to an office would make me very unhappy . I needed at this point in my life to concentrate on my artistic abilities . When I took this advice I was very happy . My family on the other have been very concerned about my money . We have had many arguments in the past about this . Really , was it any of their business ! I have looked after myself since I was in my teens . I have always done well for myself despite how much money I was earning . My parents left hesitantly on the Tuesday . My mother was still very upset and worried about me . I called into work on Monday and told Dave I would not be in for a while . My internet and land line were finally working . The Bell guy could not understand what the problem was . Before he even did anything my service came back on . Once my parents left until that Sunday I spent half of it sleeping and the other half drinking . Drinking however proved to be dangerous because I spent a lot of time calling Bob , leaving him message after message . I acted like a complete fool , a teenager who had broken up with her boyfriend . Well I guess I needed to go through this stage as it was the first time in my life I had ever had a romantic relationship with someone and felt rejection . I finally came to my senses on Monday and Bob and I had a good conversation . He was at his rental place , now vacated , making plans to renovate so he could move in . No more wine he says . Of course I do not listen to anyone . I hadn 't taken a shower or turned on the TV the entire week . All I ate were peanut butter sandwiches . When I finally calmed down I sent Bob an email telling him what I was going through . He has not replied or talked to me since . I sent another email telling him that none of this was his fault . That I had sabotaged the relationship - which I did for reasons I guess I will eventually find out . I am tying not to feel too foolish or guilty about what I have done . But everything does happen for a reason . Ok to continue . Diane and Carol came to my place to pick me up . I packed a bag and got the house in order . Right now I need to write the next part of this story . I am very angry at the moment and it fits well with this part . Diane had offered to drive me to a Dr . 's appointment I had made the week before . First we went to her place . My nieces , Holly and Courtney were with us . I was feeling sad and trying hard not to cry . Mostly I felt guilty and embarrassed about the week before and the way I handled Bob . I knew there was no way to change this and I was missing what we did have . Shortly after we arrive at Diane 's and the kids leave the room Diane starts lacing into me . Carol says she is just saying these things because she is worried about me . I am questioning this because it seems to be the standard excuse for her treatment of me in so many incidences . I am saying to her " Please . I do not need to hear these things now " . She tells me … it 's difficult for me to even remember . . . but she is saying so many hurtful things . Carol and she think I am bipolar and they start listing all the things I have that that prove I am this way . How I never listened to their advice ? ? ? How much I had changed ? ? ? How I never did anything with the family ? ? ? All bullshit . And on and on and on until I actually start believing them . My God , this is just what a depressed person needs to hear . I try to get across to them that the job has caused me a lot of stress and grief . I have told them many times how very unhappy I was there . Why would Diane never believe me when I said I was happy ? In fact she would get angry with me . And when I wasn 't happy with my job her advice to me was to stick it out . I don 't know why I need to write about this now . I wrote about this before but now I realize how important the incident that happened a few weeks ago was to me . The evening when my family ( whom I never have anything to do with ) finally came to visit me for a change . The time I walked to the bus stop with my aunt and uncle in my pyjamas . Maybe this is why they think I am bipolar ? This evening occurred just before I decided to give Bob my journal ? As I wrote before , Janet and I were sharing a smoke outside and I mentioned to her how happy I am with the way things are between Bob and me . She gives me that look . Why is it when I tell them I am happy I always get replies that are negative ? Like I don 't even know my own mind and whether I 'm happy or not ? Whose life is this ? I was very honest with her . Why did my Dad get involved too ? Also , I mentioned to them that I 'm spiritual and believe there is a higher power , and that we are directed by this power . We had a heated discussion about Bob and they called me a religious fanatic because of my belief in a higher power and my belief in synchronicities . This argument went on until 2 a . m . when I finally walked away . Janet said it shouldn 't bother me what she thought . I told her it did . How would she like it if I told her she was crazy and didn 't know what was good or bad or whatever ? My mother stayed out of it until the end when she came outside and stuck up for me . She asked Janet why she didn 't like Bob . Janet tells her because he is still living in his house with his wife . So my mother says to her " Don 't you think people get in this types of situations . . . where they have no choice . Divorces like this happen all the time " . Well I am a peace keeper or have been most of my life ( this may change ) . My mother stuck up for me so I just dropped it and tried to make light of it . Janet has not been in touch with me once since this conversation . Mom told me she wants to reconnect with me . However , Janet I hear has a list of her own problems . Now is not a good time to try and patch things up and perhaps a good deal of distance is needed before we do . |
Hi I 'm new here and love the site . . . . . I have an embarrassing story I need to get off my chest . Yesterday a girl I have been dating only a few weeks walked in on me while I was pooping . . . . . She had just arrived at my house and I was finishing getting ready . . . . I guess she didn 't realize I was in the toilet room and she just opened the door and walked in ! ! I unfortunately don 't have a lock on my toilet room door and I was in the middle of a HUGE dump . . . . It 's SO embarrassing to know she has seen me grimacing and pushing out a big poo as well as smelled me like that . . . . . . I 'm sure she will probably break it off now . . . . oh well I just wanted to share . . . hope everyone is well ! I managed to win the worst father award today lol . . . . I had a few cokes today when I got a call from my son that he and his friend were broke down on the side of the road and he needed me to pick them up . His friend 's car was broken down , they were heading to our house to play video games . . . . Where they were it would take about 20 minutes to get up to ( that 's where their school is ) . I made my way up there and about 3 / 4 of the way there I felt a very noticable urge to pee . I didn 't want to leave them waiting so I pushed it off . I made my way there and picked them up to find his friend holding himself . They get in the car and he says " I was going to pee but I didn 't want to get caught by a cop . " By the time we pulled out and finally found a u turn on the highway I REALLY had to go and I couldn 't hold myself while driving . It did not help hearing his moans and comments about how bad he had to go . I asked if he wanted me to stop , hoping he would say yes , and he said he would rather get to the house , he hates public restrooms . I could have died . About halfway home I forced myself to drive with one hand because squeezing my legs tightly wasn 't doing the job . About five minutes from home I started doubting I would make it and his friend was starting to make comments that he was going to piss himself . As we pulling into our road I felt my first shot of piss into my underwear . I was freaking out . We pulled into our driveway and his friend kept saying " Oh god , no , god dammit , shit " , etc . I was frightened because we only had one bathroom . I stood out of the car and felt another long jet of piss into my pants . It still wasnt noticable . I ran into the house , dribbling with each step , and as I had guessed his friend was in the bathroom pissing away into the toilet . I started to pee full force at that point . I panicked because I didnt want his friend to see me but I couldn 't move . And just when I was about to run away he comes out . He had a 3 inch sized wet spot on his pants and here I was standing here with a puddle under me . HDave I suggested she squat and poop into a trash bag , then we 'd throw it out . She reluctantly agreed , having no other viable options . My girlfriend always lets me watch her on the toilet , but this was the first time I 'd seen her poop squatting . We went out into the backyard and she removed her jeans and panties , getting in a squatting position . She peed for a few seconds and then the stream died off . I saw her hole open up as she farted softly , and then farted again . Her hole closed again , then opened and closed a few times , finally staying open as the head of a poop came out . I heard her grunt a little while she pushed the poop out . The poop slowly inched out , a little at a time , and she was grunting a few times while she pushed . Towards the end , the poop rushed out the last bit and broke off . Her hole stayed open and another poop poked out shortly after . This one seemed to be a bit softer , she only grunted once then the rest of the poop came out and it landed in the bag . She reached for the toilet paper and wiped four times , and once on her front , then I took the bag out to the dumpster . She had to take a dump again later that night , and I also had to go , so we both used the same bag . She went first , squatting over the bag again . This time , she let out five or six poops very fast . The whole thing must have been over in about 3 minutes . I contributed one firm poop to the bag , we both wiped , and I threw that bag out in the dumpster as well . I was fascinated to hear about Taylor peeing in your wet bed so that she didn 't get in trouble a lot . I 've got stories about that too that I can share if you would like to hear them . Perhaps you can tell us - was it often a problem that you and Taylor had to pee when you woke up , but somebody was in the bathroom ? I 'd like to read an in detail post of the longest / best / most worth writing about crap you ever took - - and about a normal poop please . Not about an accident or anything . But I also like listening - in posts a lot . Thanks ! You wanted the story about my boss , you 've got it - here it is , he actually played a minor , but important role in the whole scene . What happened is as follows . I was working with him one day , helping him get caught up on projects . One of the things that need to be done was to fix a stall door lock in one of the ladies rooms . Our plan was that I would stand guard outside the door while he changed the lock - one of the things he told me was not to let the ladies use the mens , as he felt it was a double - standard - it was OK for them to use the mens room , but if a man should ever use the ladies room , all hell would break loose . So as far as he was concerned , what was good for the goose was good for the gander . Well anyhow , things were going well , he was getting the lock changed , and there I am standing guard . Then along comes these two women , I assume they were mother and daughter , one was older and the other one younger . So they approach my post , and I tell them that the restroom was closed briefly , and the reason why . The younger lady said that the older one had to go badly , so they were going to use the men 's . As per my boss 's instructions , I blocked the doorway to the men 's and told them " Sorry , I can 't . You 'll either have to wait or use another restroom . " To which the older lady replied " I can 't hold it to anonother restroom . " I told her " I 'm sorry " to which she replied " Young man , if I don 't get into the restroom shortly , you 're going to have a wet on the floor to clean up " ( her exact words ) . I still stood firm - if the bos s wouldn 't have been there , it would have been different , I would have let them in . So the older lady sighed deepoly , and with a sheepish look , slowly sat down on the bench - slowly , as if she was trying not to make any sudden moves that would cause her to piss her shorts - she had shorts and sandals on . She was under pressure , there wa sno doubt about that - as soon as she sat down , she began to squirm around on the bench - at one point she winced and drew her mouth tight and seemed to be holding her breathNobody we had a long weekend , and as I mentioned , my best friend visited me . I think I 've told story with her a while ago . A lot happened , I 'm recounting what happened during the last two days . Lindsey and I got to know each other during college . She had been there with me during all the good times and bad times , especially when I went through a painful break up with my ex boy friend . Probably it was she who ignited my interest to see other women pooping , because she was quite open and carefree about her bowel movements . Years later she moved out , But we always kept in touch with each other . Spending time with her on Sunday was special because I wouldn 't be seeing her for a while , as she was planning on taking a career break for a few months in California . Lindsey arrived at my place around noon and I had lunch and went to the mall , Lindsey bought this lovely black tank top , and I bought a red halter top and other tidbits . We came home , grabbed a glass of wine and indulged in a good conversation - about her vacation plans , juicy morsels about the guy she went on several dates with , and the " stuff i cant tell you over the phone " . . . . As it got later , I suggested that we go out on a pub crawl , maybe to a club . After all we won 't be seeing each other for a while , why not have a girl 's night out in the city like our college days ? We were really having a bash . Lindsey was having several martinis at each place . I told her to go slow , she said that she need to really unwind and take a break from all the work , for she 's been working nonstop during past weeks to finish her stuff . After a few hours , Lindsey was very drunk ( I was quite drunk too ) . We took a taxi to my place . I held her as she couldn 't walk . When we got into the apartment , she went straight to the toilet and threw up . I held her hair , flushed the toilet and helped her to wash her mouth . Then I guided her to the sofa and made her lie down and offered her some juice , to ease her hangover . She took a few sips and laid back on the sofa , I held her hand and asked if she 's all right . She moaned softly and said that she wasn 't feeling well . A little after , there was the smell of a silent but deadly , followed by a wet fart " pfrrork " Lindsey rolled over and said " Oh nobody I feel really sick , I think I really need to go to the toilet " . I helped her get up and held her , on the way she let out more wet farts and said she is about to shit her pants . I removed her black pants , brought her pink panties down to her ankles and slowly eased her on the toilet . Not a moment later , A torrent of loose turds shot out of her anus with the noise of " Krplop - Kerplop - prrrftplop " one after the other . I really felt bad for Lindsey , she looked very helpless , hunched forward , her head between her thighs . I held her hand and stroked her back , she was in a pretty bad shape . I gently stroked her head and asked if she 's all right , Lindsey only shook her head sideways . She kept shitting and farting , it was getting quite heavy with the putrid smell of her shit . After about two minutes there was silence , and I asked Lindsey if she was ok , but there was no answer , as she had passed out . I felt super bad for Lindsey , she looked so helpless , passed out on the toilet with a dirty bottom , I gently tried to wake her up , she fumbled for toilet paper . She wasn 't in a situation to wipe herself , so I asked her to get up . I reached behind her and saw that her bottom was quite messy , brown streaks of shit on the insides of her butt . I tore a wad of toilet paper and gently wiped her from bottom to top . I felt her anus twiching slightly when I moved tp across it . It was a weird feeling , feeling the warmth of the insides of another woman 's private parts . On one hand , it was a very erotic experience , given the interest I have to see and hear other women pooping . But on the other hand I loved Lindsey as my best friend and I felt very moved by her predicament , I didn 't want her to pass out with a dirty bottom . It took a total of 6 vipes to clean her up . I flushed the toilet . Lindsey kicked her pants off and grabbed on to me , I took her to the sofa and made her lie down . Next morning , I woke up with a huge urge to pee and a headache . I fumbled to the bathroom , got my shorts and panties down and started peeing furiously . All the alcohol I had last night had a laxative effect on me I felt a bowel movement building up at the tip of my anus and it expelled itself with a " prroah " . I pushed further but it only produced gas . I wiped myself , and went to check on Lindsey , she was still sleeping . I had some oats , laid down and tried to sleep . After I while I heard someone in the bathroom , and Lindsey was there . She had her panties stretched across her ankles , there was a huge brown stain in it . Lindsey looked tired and weak , but better than last night . I moved closer to her , she hugged me and thanked for taking care of her last night , and it really wasn 't a big deal . I asked how she was feeling , and she said she was hungover . She looked at the skidmark and said that she must have let out some while sleeping . I gave her a fresh pair of panties . I would 've liked to wipe her again , but she was all done . The rest of the day was quiet , both of us were battling hangovers . After a couple of hours , it was time for a good bye . We hugged and kissed each other , and lindsey was " Oh sweetie thanks so much for cleaning me up last night , I owe you one " . It really was nothing . After all , she was my best friend , isn 't it ? . It 's sad to see her leave , but all good things must come to an end . This whole episode with Lindsey made two of us even closer . Hi everyone ! Sorry for my absence lately , I 've been incredibly busy with school and what not . While I was away though , I did spend one weekend camping with Ashley and her parents . The campground was really nice , and they had good clean bathrooms , but there was only one problem . I 'll get to that in a moment , because I want to start at the beginning of this story . Ashley and I were coming back from a walk in the woods , when I felt the familiar rumble in my guts telling me it was time for a dump . I told Ashley and she said she could probably pee too , so she 'd tag along . We found the camp 's bathrooms and headed inside . The bathroom was an interesting set - up , with three toilets , but no stall doors . There was only little partitions between the toilets . It didn 't really bother me , I just kept my panties higher up to hide my private parts . Well , anyway , the bathroom was empty when we got there , so I took the furthest toilet . After I sat down , I peed for a little bit and began pushing out a turd . It was fairly long , and broke off with a ploop sound . As I pushed out another turd , someone else came into the bathroom . With me on the furthest one , and Ashley in the middle , she took the closest toilet . She pulled her panties and jeans all the way down to her ankles , and peed a long forceful stream . My turd broke off , splishing into the water . I felt a little more left , so I continued sitting . The girl 's pee stream died down after a while , and I heard a splash . While I pushed out another smaller turd , I heard four more splashes from her . And the odor was really noticeable by now . We both stood up , looking at our dumps at the same time . I saw my big turd curled up at the bottom of the bowl , and two smaller turds on either side . I wiped five times , and flushed . I was washing my hands , when she flushed and joined me at the sink . We struck up a conversation , at first it was a little awkward , but we continued talking even after we left the bathroom . Her name is Victoria , and she likes this kind of bathroom stuff . She said she often poops twice a day , and they always smell really bad . It 's just a shame I 'll probably never see her again . . . I thought we could have been good friends . Where I live here in ? ? ? ? we have a good Memorial Day parade for the holiday . MY wife and I went and we always sit where the parade makes a turn in its route . The street is lined with people standing or sitting in lawn chairs . The weather was very nice this year so the turn out for the parade was very good . In the people across the stret from us was a grandfather with his granduaghter . The granduaghter was dressed in a very pretty dark pink dress and she was tall for her age . I cam only guess that she was 4 to 6 years old . She played with a baloon as she sat waiting for the parade to go by which it had not reached our area yet . Soon we could hear one of the first bands comming towards us and they were playing . They were a revolutionary war style band playing fife and drums . They were now in sight but still up the street from us . Everyone was clapping including the granduaghter sitting accross the street . I noticed that even that she was clapping she was real fidgety sitting in her seat . Then it happened . The band had a small cannon that they shot off with a loud bang ! This caught many people by surprise scaring them that either didn 't see the little cannon or didn 't thnk it would fire . Well the loud boom scared the litle girl across from us For I saw her jump up in her seat . Then I saw her look down at her dress for a couple of seconds . Then as she sat there in her chair she pulled her dress up and she had on a matching pair of dark pink panties which had a grwowing darker pink area on them . Ther loud boom of the cannon had made her start peeing herself ! The litle girl held her dress up kept looking down at her panties as she peed . She didn 't say a word to anyone that was around her . She kept looking down all the time it took her to pee . She did get up out from her seat after she had finished peeing and walked over to her grandfather and tugged at his shirt to get his attention . He turned and she must have told him that she peed . She then lifted up her dress and showed him her now wet pee soaked panties . He took her hand and they both walked away heading down the street most likely to go back to thier house . They were gone a short time for I noticed both of them had come back . She was still in the pink dress but I am sure she had on different panties now . They stayed and watched the rest of the parade and left when it was all over as we did too . Esteban - I 'm glad to hear you are able to use the Washington Square Park toilets with such ease . I 've also heard about them , but have never been in the city to use them . Sounds interesting . I had to use a toilet stall at a fairgrounds for a few days , and the door had a busted lock . It would swing open so you had to keep your hand or knee in place to keep it closed . While grabbing paper or wiping , you had to let the door swing open about 8 inches . The funny thing was , the stall was visible from the outside , so the people walking by could see your legs , from the thighs to your feet , including your pants and underwear . I used the stall several times , including at night , so I know there were several folks who must have seen me as they walked by the restroom . I decided against wiping while standing , though , because i didn 't want to get arrested ! Most of the times you could see my legs and briefs , though . They were briefs with stripes and patterns , so they were easy to spot ! An unusual experience this morning . I had my morning coffee and I was preparing to get ready to go out for the day . I went into the bathroom , picked up the book I 've been reading and dropped down on the toilet . Suddenly I was aware of something intruding on my reading - it was pain ! I was trying to shit , but it hurt . I set the book down and pushed again . More pain and no progress . I relaxed and tried to go again with the same result . So I reached over , turned on the water in the sink , wet my finger and reached into my ass to feel what was going on . Kind of gross , but I didn 't know what else to do . I felt a large , hard turd . I managed to pull pieces of the end and finally it came out . It was only about 6 or 8 inches long , but it was about as thick as the cardboard roll inside a roll of TP . It was quite hard and I think the thick end had been positioned wrong to exit , or something . I don 't know . I just hope it never happens again . I got in the shower and scrubbed my hands with cleanser with bleach in it . Dennis , let me satisfy a bit of your curiosity . I am a young , attractive ( they say I could double for Gillian Anderson ) English woman who seldom wipes her bum . My shit stinks like everybody else 's ( it is usually quite firm ) but I very rarely wipe my bottom after I have a shit . After a dump , I just pull up my knckers and go on with my day . My boyfriend has told me numerous times that I have a smelly bottom but that this strangely turns him on . I just laugh . Here is the last part of my post with the girl Cindy at my sistors wedding . Well it was the next morning . I had gotten up and met Cindy down at breakfast which both of us ate in a real hurry . I needed to piss badly number one and I also had to shit number two . I wasn 't sure about Cindy but I had a sneaking position that she did also just by the way she was hurring through breakfast like I was doing . We got up from the table and Cindy told me to come with her . Cindy had on a summer dress and I was in a pair of shorts and a short sleeve shirt . Cindy went outside instead of staying in the house . I followed her . She did have pockets in her dress and I noticed that one of the pockets had a buldge in it as we walked heading down towads the barn . Before we went behind the barn I told Cindy besides needing to piss I had to shit too . Cindy told me she too had to do both also . She pulled out the end of some toilet paper that was in her dresses pocket showing it to me . See Dave I came prepared ! We both laughed . We were behind the barn now and she waited for me to slide the small door open . I did and I stepped up first and I helped her up and once she was inside I closed the door shut . Cindy quickly headed over to the old bathtub . She was pulling up her dres as she walked towards the tub . In a few steps she had it pulled right up to her waist andher bare ass was doing a nice wiggle as she walked over to the tub ! I told Cindy wait ! She stopped . I told her I dont think shitting in the bathtub is a goood idea . It 's better to shit over in the hay and I pointed that way where the hay was scatted all over the floor . Cindy looked towards the hay for a second or two and she still went over to the tub . She turned around once she reached it and she waited for me to come over with her . As I took the last few steps and as I stood by the side of the tub with her she told me just take some of thehay and put it in the tub when we are done . Good idea ! I said back to her . Cindy sat down on the edge of the tub as I quickly popped my snap and I just yanked down my shorts letting them fall right down around my ankles and sneakers . I sat down on the edge of the tub too next to Cindy . I was erect which Cindy seeing I was giggled . She reached right over and took a hold of my penis and started trying to push it down . Hold it ! I said to Cindy . I 'm too hard to piss in the tub . Leave it up and I 'll just piss on the floor . Cindy pointed my penis up and we both got ready to go . I started my iss forst sending out a very yellow looking stream that arced outward and came down on the wooden floorboards better then six feet out in front of me . Then I heard Cindy start to piss now . I turned and looked over and down and comming from her vagina she had a hard dark yellow piss stream hissing loudly flowing from it . Being close enough to her and with her pissing in the tub I could easily smell the oder of Cindys piss . I was sure that my piss was smelly too but being six fet away you couln 't smell it . I fet my anus opening up for I was starting to shit . I told Cindy that I was starting to shit . She leaned back slightly to look . I could feel it comming on very fast . Cindy told me she could see it now . Boy it is really comming out ! There was no noise to it as it came out . I could tell it was pretty fat for my anus was wide open . Then it either broke or it had come completely out for I felt my anus close and a soft thump down in the tube . Then I felt my anus open right up again and I started to shit again . Real fast thsi time too . Cindy told me that she could see the second piece and it was comming out quite fast just like the first one . The second one must have moved faster or it was just shorter in its length for it only took a few seconds for it to come and end . Thatt was it for me as far as shitting . I will say this it sure did stink ! I was still pissing but my stream was easing for it had fell some and was comming back leaving a wet trail on the wooden floorboards as it came back . I stopped pissing before it came all the way back to me . I was done with both and I felt good having done both . Now I could look and watch Cindy who was still pissing very hard in the tub . As I watched her piss I wondered how much she was going to shit . I got my answer several seconds later . Cinys piss stream suddenly slackened right off going from a hard hissing stream right down to just a dribble . She let out a wicked smelling loud fart . Then I heard crackling and I then saw her shit sliding out and downward . Hers was very smooth looking but not that big around . It was moving quickly and it was stretching as it went downward . It broke under its on weight and the part that broke off made a soft thud down in the tub . Her shit was a tannish color . Cindy had told me mine was brown . As I watched the reamaining part kept comming . Since Cindy was still dribbling out piss as she shit piss was running down her shit and dripped off the end of it . This second part was stretching too and it had a crack open up in it and it broke havuing a second dull thud come from down in the tub . The reamainiing piece grew very long and then it dropped away from her ass making a louder but still soft thud in the tub . Then several shot pieces of shit shot out from her in a row . That was it as far as Cindy shitting . Her piss stream shot back to life shooting staright down thsi time . I could see it along with hearing it hiting her shit down in the botom of the tub . Cindy now was pulling the wad of toilet paper out of her dresses pocket . Her piss stream after several seconds of going hard now died right out and had stopped but there was droplets of piss dripping off from her lower crotch . Cindy rolled off several sheets of the toilet paper . She then turned and looked at me and handed me the wad of toilet paper . Wipe mine and I 'll wipe yours ! Cindy giggled as she said it to me . So I took the paper from her hand and Cindy got up from the tub moved over in front of me and sqauted down a little . I could see that she did have some skid marks on her inner asscheeks from her shitting . I genty gave her a wipe and tore the paper ff and gave her ass a second wipe with aper . It came out clean . Then I took the paper and slid my hand through her opened thighs and wiped her frontside . I was done and she stepped away and I stood up and squated in front of her . She wiped me gently and only had to wipe me once . That was it . I pulled up my shorts and we both went over and hggathered up a lot of hay from the floor and dumped it in the tub . It took several handfulls to cover up our shit . We smiled when we were done and we then left the barn quickly . We went back up ti the house and two hours later Cindy was gone heading home . I had a greatr time with hjer and I have never forgoten it . Upstate Dave thank you very much for your advise THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER i finally was able to poo and wee in a public loo . I wasn 't that desperate but felt the urge coming from both ways so it tried to uses the local park toilets i went in and nobody was there thankfully . i wiped the loo seat thoroughly and sat down with no problems i relaxed took a deep breath and started both my poo and wee was quick and easy but i looked over to the toilet tissue dispenser and it was empty but no problems a had a lot of receipts in my purse thank you again now i feel i can go to the loo anywhere thank you Hi everyone . I 'm 12 years old . My name is Madison but everyone calls me Maddy . I have blond hair and blue eyes . I 'm 5 feet tall and thin . I live with my parents and my 16 year old sister Taylor , who will also be posting . I 've been interested in bathroom stuff for as long as I can remember . I wet the bed almost every night until I was 7 , and even now if I drink too much before bed , or if I 'm really tired I still wet the bed sometimes . I 've always had daytime accidents . I don 't have them as often now , but about 5 times a year I get caught in a situation where I can 't make it . I also go in my pants on purpose sometimes . I don 't have one easy answer for why I do it . Sometimes I 'm just being lazy and don 't want to walk to the bathroom . Other times I know I 'll have to wait a long time to go in the toilet and I don 't want to wait . And sometimes just for fun . I know it sounds strange but I like doing things that most people would see as weird or bad . Our parents have never made a big deal about accidents . They pretty much don 't worry about it as long as we clean up any mess and don 't try to hide what happened . They also know about the games I play . They don 't really approve of it but they see it as harmless , and better than some other things I could do to amuse myself . My interest in this stuff obviously started with my bed wetting and daytime accidents . I pee in the bathtub and pool like every kid does ( And most adults I 'm sure ) . My first memory of anything strange is when I was 4 and Taylor was 8 . My sister woke me up early one morning when she brushed her hand on the front of my pajamas to check and see if I had wet the bed . I thought she was just going to help me change into dry clothes and move me over to her bed to finish sleeping . She had done that before . But after she discovered that I was wet she told me to get up for a minute . She explained that our mom was in the bathroom taking a shower and that she really had to pee and couldn 't hold it anymore . When I got up she took her pants and underwear off and laid down on her stomach on the same spot where I had peed . Right away I heard a hissing sound and Taylor looked relieved . She peed for what seemed to me like a really long time . After she finished she put her own clothes back on and helped me change into dry clothes . Once we were both laying back down on her bed she said she was sorry but she couldn 't hold it anymore and didn 't want to have an accident . She knew that our parents wouldn 't think anything about my bed being wet . Our mom did say something about how wet my bed was , and made sure I didn 't drink a lot before bed that night . I never told them the truth about what happened . The weirdest one recently was last year . My class had a substitute teacher that day . I needed to pee with about an hour left in school but the teacher wouldn 't let me go . By the time school ended I really had to go . I tried the school bathrooms after school ended but they were locked . Taylor 's high school is right across the street from my elementary school , so I would wait for her and we would walk home together . It took her about 10 minutes to get out . By the time we started walking home I felt like I was going to explode . I was fidgeting and crossing my legs every few steps . After a couple of minutes of this Taylor got really annoyed . She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down a side road where there were no cars or people . She asked me why I didn 't go at school and I explained about the teacher and the locked bathrooms . She asked me why I didn 't just walk out of class and go . I told her I didn 't want to get in trouble . Then she surprised me . She pretty much ordered me to pee my pants . I asked her why and she told me that my fidgeting was slowing us down and driving her crazy , and that it wasn 't good to hold it for so long . I said I would just pull my pants down and squat , but she said that someone might see and she didn 't want some creepy person to watch me pee . I knew she wasn 't going to let me talk my way out of it and I did really have to go so I spread my legs and relaxed . I peed for at least a full minute . It felt really weird to walk home in soaking wet pants . It was kind of exciting though , because I was worried someone from my school would see . No one did . When we got home Taylor told our parents that the substitute teacher wouldn 't let me go and I had an " accident " . My mom called my school and complained . My class had a different substitute teacher the next day . Wow . This is really long , so I 'll stop for now . I 'll share more later . I think Taylor will be writing soon also . Back by popular demand , I will continue my lifelong list of public toilet stories . My next story takes place when I was in grade school . After my first and most memorable experience in the school bathroom , I decided to keep going as often as possible . I would rarely ever enter a stall if people were in the bathroom either at the sinks or the urinals . I was still pretty shy about being seen enter or exit a stall . Once I was in the stall , however , I was not shy at all . Well , actually , this story is where my shy behavior in the stall ended . It was early in the day , prior to lunch , and I had showed up to school late . I had a dentist appointment that morning and I was late getting in . One the way to school , my grandmother had stopped at a McDonald to get my breakfast before she took me in . I used to love the breakfast burritos they had . Anyway , this time of day was when we would all read silently at our desks . I remember I was reading something on the Titanic when I began to feel my stomach tense up . I was kind of excited because I now enjoyed using the school bathroom so much that I would hope every day taht the urge would come . I continued to read my book , letting the urge build up some more when it happened . My asshole tightened up so tight that I lifted slightly from my seat . Diarrhea . My excitement turned to sweat as soon as the feeling registered in my head . I looked over at the shelf . The bathroom pass was sitting there , waiting for me to grab it . I sat my book down , calmly but quickly hurried to the door , grabbed the pass , and took off . I did an awkward run to the bathroom . I couldn 't run too fast or I would begin to leak , and I knew I only had a matter of seconds before I would not be able to hold back . I got to the bathroom door and pushed it open . I rounded the corner quickly and to my surprise , the first , second , fourth , and fifth stalls were occupied . I was pretty shocked as typically there would only be one , or rarely two stalls taken . To have 4 occupied was crazy . I didn 't have time to admire the feet , I was sitting in a stall at work yesterday and a guy entered the stall next to me . I was in the handicapped stall , so the stall next to me was about four feet away . The guy had nice dress shoes and blue dress pants . He put a seat cover down , unzipped his pants , dropped them and sat down . He started pushing and you could hear his stools pushing against the tissue of the seat cover . He proceeded to let out the most amazing amount of shit . It went on and on and on . He breathed and sighed as it came out . It was probably a mixture of relief and pleasure . I couldn 't imagine how one person could have so much in himself . I tried to imagine him sitting in a meeting and feeling this urge build gradually until it must have been almost unbearable . He stopped , paused for a second , and then another installment came . He then wiped . Because of the light above , the shadow showed him pulling the paper , folding it with his right hand , wiping from the back , then examining it , folding it over and wiping again . He wiped about ten times . He then got up , pulled up his pants , flushed and left the stall , I could see him at the sinks through the crack in my stall , He was a fit looking thirty - something year - old guy . I imagined him going back to his desk with the amazing feeling of relief after pushing out such an enormous amount of excrement . He might have been constipated and the resulting bowel movement was induced by a laxative . But it was not a violent explosion ; it was really a very gentle and relaxed release . It was quite amazing . I will go back to this stall next week at around 9 : 00 AM to see if he returns . I would like to say a couple of things before I start my story . i would like to congradulate all those compassioinate janitors who let someone in who really needs to go . My boyfriend works at a custodian and he realizes how difficult the dicision can be . Also I would like to give some advice to Michale aka MS . It realize your desires however again they are not worth getting in trouble for . Also I have found a potty that my mother used to have and have started reading posts on this site while sitting on it . I spent most of a night doing that . As before I was able to fart and pee for a long time . One thing about the potty is that I had an accident and got some pee on my rug . I cleaned it and from then on I kept my vagina right above the whole . One thing about the farts this time is that I let out five tiny poop pellots with them during the night . That was good . I then had what I thought would be the one final poop and it was good . However I had to go again and this time I sat on my regular toilet . I got down on the seat and this time pulled my skirt up way up so I could see my butt on the seat . I pushed and then it happened . zzzPPPPPTTTuh oww umph uuu ooow , plunk , AAAAHHHH ! ! I had a good fart followed by a poop right after that . It was not like on the cosmic skale that I have seen on some of the other posts but it was good ! To continue my summer job saga , the following summer , after I had just graduated college , Sue and I got engaged . I was going on to medical school in the fall in the same city where my college was , so I stayed there so I could be with Sue . She had another year of nursing school to go , so we planned to get married the following summer . In the meantime , I moved in with her . . and her two apartment mates . Since the students often had to spend nights at the hospital , not all 3 were often home at the same time , but at least one was . This was a good deal for me , since at least someone was there to make dinner , so I didn 't have to scrounge for food . I 'm no cook . That summer , I did not return to my summer job at " The Swamp " . I got tired of slogging around in the muck . Besides , there was no guarantee I would get Mary for a partner again and watch her pee with her " Whizzy " all summer . Instead , I got a job with the park district on a maintenance / repair crew . We didn 't do any housekeeping work . Since I had some handyman skills and my partner Sam could barely tell a hammer from a screwdriver , I was the " senior " partner . One day we needed to replace a broken frosted - glass window in one of the women 's toilets . This was a large park and the next nearest toilets were a mile away . We were working on a Saturday because the park maintenance was behind schedule . The weather was hot and sunny and the park was crowded . We started around 11 : 00 AM and the job was likely to take 3 - 4 hours , or maybe longer if we ran into any snags . We weren 't just replacing the glass . The entire frame was rotted and had to be replaced . I had asked the supervisor what to do about closing the women 's , hanging a " co - ed " sign on the men 's , or just leave it open and let the women make their own decisions , since it was a long haul to the other toilets . To complicate matters , neither the men 's nor the women 's stalls had doors on them . The women 's had 3 stalls and the men 's had just 1 stall and 3 urinals . The boss opted for leaving the women 's open with a warning sign posted , which we had in the truck . It said , " Open . Men working inside for several hours " . Well , sort of as a way of reassuring the ladies we wouldn 't bother them , I replaced " Men " with " Gentlemen " written on some yellow sticky tape . The various reactions were quite interesting . I don 't know how many women decided to " hold it " or go somewhere else , but a surprisingly large number of women used the toilets , with varying degrees of ingenuity to obtain some privacy . . or not bother . We waited until the room was empty before we hung the sign and started to bring in our gear . The first to come in were two older women . They looked around and then asked if they could trust us not to look while they peed . We said we would " try our best " without giving them any guarantees . Even if we wanted to , it would have been impossible not to catch a glimpse as we were moving around doing our work . So the two women went into 2 stalls , pulled their shorts and panties down to their ankles , spread their legs far enough to balance themselves , squatted over the bowl , and pissed heavily . One sprayed a lot , while the other had a rather straight stream . We couldn 't help but see them pissing as we moved around . One , who saw us looking briefly , casually remained us to please not watch . While they were peeing , 2 other women came in . One went into the third stall while her friend stood in front of her sort of blocking our view , but it wasn 't very effective . She , too , pulled her shorts and panties down to her ankles , squatted and pissed , and then the two women changed places . In the meantime , the other two women finished , wiped their pussies , pulled up their pants , and went to wash their hands . Many women came in to piss and poop that day . Most of the women squatted over the bowl . Only a few sat down , and most of those had to poop . ( Few women , I understand , like to sit on public toilets ; some are terrified of the thought ) . Largely , the pissers - only followed a similar pattern : shorts and panties down to their ankles or just above their knees , squat over the bowl , piss , wipe , pull up pants , and head for the wash bowls . Some managed to pull down only the backs of their pants while keeping the fronts high enough up to keep their pussies covered . When they wiped , they just pulled their pants forward and put their hand inside to wipe . A few were wearing dresses or skirts , which they just held in front of themselves . Several reminded us to please not look , most just glanced at us and then went about their business and paid no attention to us . Things started to get crowded around 12 : 30 , with many women waiting their turn inside , or sometimes in line through the propped - open door . Here is a sampling of some the more interesting events . One woman squatted over the bowl , pants just above her knees , pissed , and then continued to hover there until two big turds plopped out . This was rare . Most of the poopers sat down , often covering the seat with toilet paper first . One woman placed her hands on the toilet seat and sat on her hands . Once , we saw a man carrying a beach towel standing in line with a woman . When a stall opened , she went in and he opened up the towel and held it in front of her to provide privacy . I found this a little ironic , because , while providing privacy for his lady , he was busy glancing around at the other women , while trying not to look like he was looking . One elderly woman , much older than us , came in and told us that if she wasn 't so desperate she would never pee with men around and then followed with a stern lecture . " Now don 't you dare watch me " , she said . " Gentlemen don 't look when a lady is using the toilet . It isn 't decent " . Then she went into a stall and pulled her pants all the way down to her ankles , spread her legs wide , got into a kind of half squat , making no attempt whatever to try to keep her pussy covered . Then she let go a very loud , hissing , spray for over a minute , ignoring the obvious fact that we were watching her . It was almost as if her lecture was something she needed to say for the sake of dignity and then didn 't really care after that . Another woman tried a rather strange way to get some privacy . She got a strip of toilet paper several squares long , sat down on the seat with her legs apart , and held the strip in front of her pussy to cover it . Then she began to piss , but the TP got soaked and fell apart . She just grinned when she saw her experiment didn 't really work . I 've seen many women piss in my life , but this was the only time I saw so many in such a short time . It was last Friday and she went golfing with the girls from her work as they all had the afternoon off . She had been feeling crampy all day and thought that it was because she was getting her period . She tends to get diarrhea with her period for some reason . While she was on the golf course she farted a few times to releive the pressre . The were only playing nine holes and on the third hole she went to drive the ball and let out a wet fart into her pink and white flowery cotton bikini panties . She said that after she hit the ball she just froze . She had packed some maxi pads in her golf bag in case her period started and on the third hole there was a porta - potty that she went into with her maxi pad in hand . She said that she pulled down her capri pants and panties and assessed the damage . Apparently the wet fart was really wet and had soaked into her panties pretty badly . Fortunately it had not leaked through her capri pants . She put on a maxi pad , cleaned herself up with the toilet paper that was in the porta - potty and went back to playing golf . She said that she contiued having wet farts for the rest of the day and felt lucky that she was wearing a maxi pad . Her and the girls from her work also went out for the night and my wife came home after golf and told me what had happened to her . She said that she was feeling fine and got ready to go out for the night . She wrapped her messy panties in her capri pants and put them in the laundry to be washed . The girls met at our house and I drove them to the restaurant that they were having dinner at . They went to a bar near by that they walked to and I picked them up when they were done for the night . When I got home , I could not help but check out her panties . They were a total mess ! I could not believe it . The insides of her capri pants were not in good shape either , but luckily for my wife , the wetness from her accident only leaked through them a little bit in the crotch , but wasn 't noticable when she was wearing them because it was right in the bottom of the crotch area . I guess the maxi pad did its job ! I had to check her maxi pad too . It was totalled ! I thought that they were going to be out until about 1 : 30 or 2 am , but at 12 : 30am , my wife called me on her cell phone asking me to pick her and the girls up . They were all pretty drunk and I dropped all of them off at their homes . Each time we dropped someone off , they said to my wife , " I hope you feel better " . I didn 't know what that meant until after we dropped off her last co - worker . As soon as we dropped off the last of her co - workers , my wife started crying . I asked her what was wrong and she said that she was sick and that she had a bad diarrhea accident in her panties . Her jacked was wrapped around her waist because this time the wetness from her accident had leaked through her jeans . That 's why they decided to leave earlier than they had planned . My wife said that she was having really bad cramps and that her dinner did not sit well with her . They were on the dance floor which was really crowded and she felt that she had to go and it was an emergency . Well , as she was battling her way through the crowd , her body cramped up and her bowels let go into her pink and beige stripped bikini 's . She went a few more times in her pants and as we were on our way home she went again . This time it went down her legs because there was no more room in her panties and her jeans were quite tight . TO BATHROOM BEACKY : I certainly have not got your fear . . . most of my crapping is done in public bathrooms . The reasons are many . . . . in the morning home is rush rush rush to get out the door . . . I often have a sit in the morning but if the results are not quickly forthcoming I call in at the public loos on the way to work . these toilets are unisex and spacious . . . . the cubicles are not cramped etc . . . mostly they are clean . . . they are in a lovely park set on a river in a very good area . This post concerns the rather noteworthy ( at least in my opinion ) dump I had Wednesday . I didn 't take a dump the day before and did not need to use the restroom at school . So when I came home the urge was extremely obvious , so I set my stuff down , went into the bathroom , took my jeans to below my knees , and prepared for what would hopefully be a satisfying solid dump . Luckily I was correct . After pushing weakly , a long silent fart hissed out of me and the tip of a large solid turd poked through my hole . It felt very compact and was stretching me open quite pleasurably . I stopped pushing and let it hold me open for a few minutes before starting again . I grunted and the turd slowly started out with a noticeable crackling sound . Five inches of this large compacted turd slowly oozed out before I pinched it off and rested for a moment . I was enjoying this dump immensely because I haven 't had one like this in quite a while . Gathering myself , I pushed again and the rest of the turd reluctantly poked out and started into the bowl . After pushing and grunting for about four minutes , the final six inches of the turd spashed into the water . I saw that I had done a thick , mottled medium & dark brown five incher and a six or sevn inch turd of the same color and consistency . It may been slightly difficult to push out , but at the same token I enjoyed it thoroughly . Some film stuff ; Going through my DVD collection again , I found several more films which contain toilet scenes or have an implication of using the restroom . The first one is Oliver Stone 's Natural Born Killers ; an excellent film written by Quentin Tarantino ( Pulp Fiction , Jackie Brown , Reservoir Dogs ) . The scene in question happens at the beginning when the two main characters ( played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis ) stop their car on the side of the road and relieve themselves there . Juliette Lewis pulls her pants down and squats while Harrelson also takes a piss . No pooping but a noteable scene . Another is in the film Shaft ( 2000 version , a good film in itselfNext page : Old Posts page 1758 >< Previous page : 1760 Back to the Toilet ToiletStool . com , " Boldly bringing . com to your bodily functions . " Go to Page . . . Forum Survey |
Not much to report on the last couple of days . Been working through the Valiant RPG stuff , discussing a few things with other writers involved , and finally coming to a decision about how to complete this task . Nothing new on African Firestorm , beyond how I 'm going to write the next chapter . Still researching though . We 'd driven back to the Nesbille house , where Charlie dropped us off . He said he had a couple of legal matters to finish up , but he 'd be back in time for dinner . I was going to go into town on my own until Donella said , " I 'll go with you . If you 're going to be living here , you might as well get to know the locals . Besides , I know where everything is . " We parked in the town square , near the hardware shop . We got out and looked around . There were a few more people around , all the businesses were open , and all the charm of small - town life were on display . " Hardware store , " I replied , looking at the business in question . WIHITE HARDWARE , it read over the door . Danella gave me a puzzled look , but shrugged and followed me . We walked across the road and into the hardware store . The smell of wood and oil tickled my nose as we walked in . There were four parallel aisles of hardware and equipment , stocked with the sort of items you would expect to find in a hardware store . 1950 's era music was playing over the store 's sound system . A counter was to out right as we came in . An older man was behind the counter . He was taller than me by several inches , and thin . His graying hair was nearly combed , but his eyebrows were in major need of a trimming . Dark brown eyes gazed out from behind a pair of thick glasses two decades out of date . " Donella ! " he said cheerfully . " It 's been awhile . How 's Abby ? " " She 's fine , " Donella replied agreeable . " Mister Wihite , I need to introduce you to someone . Roger , this is Mister Wihite , who owns this store . Mister Wihite , this is Roger Merlin , Lucian 's great - nephew . " I saw Wihite 's eyes light up with interest . He held out a boney hand . " Welcome to Pilgrim 's Cove , Mister Merlin , " he said . " When did you get into town ? " He nodded . " Good . Hope to see more of you . If you 'll excuse me . " Another customer , Another thin fellow with little hair and a beak for a nose , came to the counter while we were talking . I stepped back and let Wihite handle the customer . I leaned in . " I 'm competing with Lucian 's ghost , " I whispered . " Everyone loved him , now he 's gone and they 're expecting me to pick up where he left off . " " Then be Roger Merlin , " she said , his eyes locking with mine . " I don 't think you were raised too differently than he was . " I found myself staring into those eyes , losing any objections I had . We blinked at the same time , and Donella said , " Let 's get what you want and get out of here . " We spent the next ten minutes going around the store . A radio , two bundles of firewood , matches , and a lantern ( with extra batteries ) went into the cart . Donella began frowning when I added a hatchet , a baseball bat , a six - foot tall , one - inch diameter dowel rod , and a few wooden stakes to the cart . " It 's just a night in the house , " she said . " Tell that to my bruises . " I tossed in a couple of large packages of beef jerky and a large bag of trail mix into the cart . " I 'm going to be in a large house , all by myself , and there 's people who have twice tried to kill me , or at the very least , tried putting me into the hospital . I would prefer to over prepare and not need everything then to be under - prepared . " We both turned and saw Margaret Teague walking toward us . She was still wearing her business suit from this morning , though she had a basket on one arm . She gave me a brief , disapproving look , then beamed at Donella . " Nonsense ! " Margaret said . " Abby is able to take care of herself . It 's time you started living your own life , and the first step in that path is college . " " College is important ! " Margaret said . " You are a bright and hardworking woman who will go far in the world . Or do you want to stay here and marry someone like him ? " she waved a hand at me . " Why not take some on - line courses ? " I said . " Pick a couple of classes that 'll transfer to any college and take them . If you feel comfortable , then you can transfer to a college in person . " " I 'll think about it , " Donella said quickly . " If you 'll excuse me a minute , I just remembered that I need to pick up some hooks for Aunt Abby . " She hurried off . I watched Donella until she disappeared , then turn back to find myself staring into a pair of green eyes . Only they were not playful , but hard and unyielding . " I will tell you only once , Merlin , " Margaret growled . " If you ever harm Donella in any way , I will make sure they never find your body , is that clear ? " My temper flared up , and instead of backing away , I leaned in , so we were nose to nose . " You listen to me , " I growled . " I do not hurt women , in any way . I would cut off my right arm before I would willing hurt her . Do I make myself clear ? " There was a brief flash of surprise in Margaret 's eyes , and she pulled back . " Maybe Lucian didn 't make a mistake , " she murmured , then smiled . " It may come down to doing that , Merlin . Enjoy your ' camping trip . ' " She turned and walked away , though the walk was more of a strut . I merely shook my head and continued shopping . Simply put , I forgot about it . I 've been working on the Valiant RPG , trying to find any scraps of information I can use for the characters I 'm responsible for . That means lurking around Valiant message boards , podcasts about the comic lines , and any wiki I can find . The 90s versions of these characters are vastly different ( Including one that doesn 't exist in the previous era ! ) , and can supply little more than a quote or two and some minor details that I can use . Still , I 've got most of the characters stats laid out , and I hope my approach to the background that has to combine three versions of the same character into one will meet with Valiant 's approval . I 've also been googling stuff for African Firestorm . Locations , vehicles , weapons , and even language . Every detail I need to I need to write what I hope will be a great action thriller . The outline is complete through Chapter 35 , and I 'm still on course for my estimate . It 's a bit of a challenge , as this is the first time I 've done an outline in such detail before . We took Charlie 's Lincoln up to the house , some three hundred years in the opposite direction from the Nesbille house . The house was hidden by trees until we were almost on top of it , but when the last trees were past , it showed an unusual and somewhat foreboding , house . My first thought when I saw it was " Castle . " Two large round towers were connected to each other by a square middle section , all made from the same stone I 'd seen in the other buildings on the estate . The windows were narrow and each one barred with a single iron bar running lengthwise and one width - wise set into the stone . Charlie parked the car in front of the middle section . We got out and I craned my neck to look up . " Wow , " I said . " Impressive , isn 't it ? " Charlie said . " Yes , in a highly mediaeval way . " " The view from the tower top is breathtaking , " Donella said . Without warning , a pack of dogs appeared from every direction and surrounded us . All were large , well muscled animals , Pit Bulls , Mastiffs and a couple of other breeds I didn 't recognize . Then as one , they sat and stared at us . A large man came around the side of the house . And I do mean large . He was pushing seven feet and broadly built . His face was broad with shaggy dark hair and half - closed eyes . His scowl was fearsome , and he held a stick that would be a baseball bat in anyone else 's hands . His clothing consisted of a shirt , army jacket , cargo pants tucked into hard - worn work boots . He stopped behind the dogs and glared at us . Donella stepped forward . " Leal , " she said softly . " Miss Donella , " Leal said gruffly . He looked at the Lawyer . " Mister Charlie . he looked at me . " I don 't know you . " " That 's Roger Merlin , " Donella said . " He 's the new owner of the estate . Lucian left the estate to him . " " I want to see the ring , " Leal said , his voice sounding like it was coming out of a cave . " Mister Lucian said that the owner of the estate would be wearing the ring . " I held up my right hand . " This ring ? " Leal stared at it for * * * Well , my writing for the Valiant Comics RPG stands at @ 1 , 500 words . My subject isn 't the most documented character in the universe ( At least , not this time around ) . Need to go looking for any scraps of data I can find about this character . I followed Donella back into town and then north onto a two - lane road called Bayfront . As soon as we cleared the town , the walls appeared on my right , while the left was thick woods . The walls were ten feet tall , topped with black iron spikes that bent outwards . Several minutes later , Donella slowed and turned right , into a driveway bordered by two large , heavy - looking black iron gates , with closely set bars . I followed Donella through the gates and up a long driveway . Trees groves and grass bordered the driveway . Near the gate , on my left , a small , single - story house sat , made from the same colored stone the estate 's walls were made from . . A larger building sat next to the house , a barn , from the size of the doors on it . I saw a couple of large dogs in the yard looked up as we passed them , and in the rear - view mirror , I saw them rise to their feet and follow . A large pond appeared on my left , surrounded by a few trees . Just past the pond , Donella turned right onto another driveway . I followed , and saw a small , near - looking , two - story house , again , made from the same stone as the estate 's wall and the house we 'd passed on the way in . To my left , I could see the Atlantic Ocean . The ground between the driveway and the cliff was the length of a football field , mostly grass and open until it reached a few trees that helped screen the near - constant wind coming off the ocean . Beyond the trees , the rolling whitecaps of the sea water sent up sprays of mist . The driveway flared out into an area large enough for several cars to park side by side . There were already two cars there . One , like Donella 's was an older Honda , while the other was a late - model Lincoln . I parked next to Donella , who parked next to the Lincoln . There was a chill in the air as I got out . There was a wind coming in from the ocean , and despite the trees near the cliffs , it cut through my windbreaker as if it wasn 't there . Despite the sun , I felt cold . I followed Donella to the house . The house had a solid permanence to it , but there were a few softening touches , like the well - tended flowerbeds and potted plants . A porch ran along the front and the right side of the house , not as wide as Doc 's but enough for several people to stand together without crowding . Donella opened a screen door , then a door that looked thick enough to stand in for armor plating . " Aunt Abby ! " she called out as she entered . " I 'm home and I brought a guest ! " I followed Donella into a small , neatly furnished sitting room . With the exception of a big screen TV against one wall and a phone on another wall , the room could have been transported as is from the 1890s . A pair of overstuffed chairs , another pair of love seats , a sideboard , two end tables and a bookcase were the major pieces . There were two people in the room , sitting on different love seats . One was a woman in the late fifties , early sixties , wearing a purple sweater over an ankle - length skirt . Next to her , a black cat laid curled up in a ball , watching me . Her hair was brown , shot through with gray , done up into a ponytail . Wrinkles around the eyes and corners of her mouth were the only sign of age on her face . Clear brown eyes swept past Donella and locked onto me . She looked me up and down , then smiled . " Hello ! " she said . " And who are you ? " The other person turned around and I saw it was Charles Windicott . " Roger ! " he exclaimed , getting to his feet . " Are you all right ? I ran into Sheriff Walker at the courthouse right before I came out here and told me you 'd been attacked ! " ' Tell me what happened , " Charlie said . " When Sheriff Walker told me what happened , he didn 't go into any details . " I gave him the same basic story I gave the sheriff and Donella . He sank back into his seat and shook his head . " My god , " he whispered . " I never realized how much trouble you 'd been in . " " Somebody doesn 't want me up here , " I said . " No , " I replied . " I 'm not about to throw in the towel . I 'll go through with the stay tonight , as planned . " " Good ! ' Charlie said . The cat hopped off Donella 's lap and onto the floor . It padded over to me and I reached down to present my hand to it . It sniffed my hand , then sat down and looked at me . I looked back . The cat 's eyes were large , pale yellow , and strangely intelligent . Just then , Abby came back into the room with a tray and collapsible stand . She opened the stand and put the tray on top of it . " Here you go , " she said . " Cream and sugar ? " She filled and passed out the teacups , then returned to sit down next to Donella . " Now , " she said , looking at . " Why don 't you tell us a little bit about yourself ? " " Antie , " Donella said in a warning tone . " he 's not a suspect . Be nice . " " Lucian and I had coffee many times when you were at work , " Abby replied . " Lucian mentioned his family a few times and Roger in particular . I just wanted to see what sort of man he is . " Donella frowned , but before she could say anything , I said , " There 's not much to say . " I recited the same background I 'd told Donella in the car . She asked a few family questions , mostly about who the members of the family were , making a couple of mistakes that I corrected her on . She moved the conversation onto other subjects , and we spent forty - five minutes talking about local issues . Cachmawri laid on my lap , eyes closed in sleep . Finally , Charlie looked at his watch . " I think we 'd better cut this short , " he said . " I want to show Roger the main house before tonight . " " Good ! " Abby said , picking up the tray . " Donella , why don 't you go with them ? You know the house better then Charlie does . " So , I need to find out as much as I can about the one title I 'm responsible for . The problem is I have only the current series to draw from ( the previous series can 't be considered , as there are major differences between the two series , even though they 're about the same characters . ) The current series is short , and the latest I can 't draw from for several reasons . The fun of being a writer . . . . Donella 's car was a six - year old Honda that still looked in good shape . As she drove me out to the graveyard , she told me a little bit about herself . Both her parents were dead , and her Aunt Abby , her father 's older sister , had taken the young girl into his care and taken a desk job to give her niece some stability . Once Donella had graduated from high school , Abby retired from the FBI and moved to Pilgrim 's Cove . Instead of going to college , Donella had chosen to come with Abby , " to help settle her in . " That had been three years ago . " The owner of the house we were renting wanted to sell it . Aunt Abby made an offer , buit the owner didn 't want to sell it at that price . Then Carlton Brackett bought the house and gave us thirty days to get out . " Donella nodded . " Aunt Abby was mad and went down to the bank to give Carlton a piece of her mind . She ran into Lucian , told him the story and he offered her one of the houses on the estate . We 've been there two years . But enough about me . What about you ? " I gave her the same Cliff Notes of my life I 'd given the Sheriff the night before , and added a few details I 'd left out . My parents were retired , my older sister worked for the Department of Defense , while my younger brother was a sophomore at the U of MD . She listened to me talk about the few times I met Lucian . " He was the last of four children , " I said . " Grandpa , Great - Aunt Evelyn , Great - Uncle David , and Great - Uncle Lucian . Between them , they had twelve children and twenty - two grandchildren . Now , they 're all gone . " I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly . " All we have left now are memories . And I have so few of Uncle Lucian . " Three minutes later , we reached the cemetery and drove through the gates . Dorsey was near the gate . Donella slowed the car and rolled down the window . The older man smiled when he saw who it was . " Afternoon , Miss Donella , " he said . " What can I do for you ? " " Aye , that you did , " he said . He looked at Donella . I was driving up after I called the cops , and I got to the top there , " he motioned to the top of the hill , " When bam ! All four toughs go flying like twigs in a high wind . Then they got into the van and drove off . " Dorsey took off his hat and scratched his head . " Funny you ask that sir , " he said . " I could have swore there was a fifth person there . I didn 't see their face , on account they were facing away from me , but the were wearing a long black cloak . " He inhaled slowly . " But it could have been a freak shadow , because by the time I got close , it had vanished . " We walked toward Lucian 's tomb . I noticed the burnt rubber on the road from the van 's sudden stop and start . I looked around , but saw no traces of the fight , beyond some torn - up grass . We reached the tomb . It looked untouched . I went up and placed my hand on one of the stones that had been used to fill in the doorway . I felt the power under my fingertips . " Could you come here for a second ? " Sighing in resignation , she put her hand on the stone and gave me a " Why are we doing this ? " look . After a few seconds , her expression changed to puzzlement and she pulled her hand away from the stone . She put her hand on the stone again . " I feel something , " she said . Well , African Firestorm is up to Chapter 30 in the outlining stage , but I 'm going to have to downgrade priority on that , as I 've got a writing assignment from Catalyst Game Labs that 's due April 1st ( no joke ) , for my first non - Battletech game writing assignment . It 's time to expand my writing experience into another area . This is for a new RPG , which should be announced Monday ( That 's what Randall says in his tweet , at any rate ) . They didn 't catch the van , but did put an APB out for it . Sheriff Walker , who was leading the rescue force , insisted that I be checked out by the town 's doctor . He drove me back into town and soon I was sitting on and examination table , waiting for the Doctor . Doc Weatherbee came in , He was in his mid - 50s , and strongly resembled a beardless Santa Claus . His hair was snow - white , but still thick and full , and wore rimless spectacles on a bulbous nose . His lab coat was bright white , but the Hawaii shirt and shorts he wore under it did make him look a little odd . " We can fill in the paperwork later , " he said in a low , rumbling voice . " Let 's take a look at you . Shirt and shoes off , please . " I removed my shirt , shoes , and undid my pants . Doc raised an eyebrow when he saw the old bruises and the new ones . " Looks like this isn 't your first scuffle with someone . " " Well , you still have a sense of humor . That 's good . " He spent a few minutes poking and prodding me , going " hmmm , " and asking questions like " Does this hurt ? " I had to answer " yes " to the shot I 'd taken across the stomach in the arm and the graze I 'd taken on the other arm . He also looked at my other bruises and seemed satisfied that they were healing . After twenty minutes , he said , " looks like you have a few more bruises , but nothing 's broken . I suggest you avoid any bar brawls , mosh pits , or reenactments of the battle of Hastings for the next couple of weeks and let these bruises heal up before you add any more . " There was a knock at the door and Donella walked in . " Doc , " she said , staring down at a clipboard , " I need - " She looked up and stopped when she saw I was half - naked . " Oh . " Doc looked from me to Donella and back to me again , raising an eyebrow . " He 's all right , Donella , " he said . " He could stand to lose about twenty pounds , but he 's healthy and fit . " They left and I scrambled into my clothes as fast as I could . I had finished button up my shirt when there was a knock on the door and Doc stuck his head in . " Sheriff wants to talk to you , " he said . I glanced at my watch . It was nearly one o ' clock and my stomach rumbled . Doc 's eyebrow went up again . " I 'll see about getting you something to eat , too , " " Nonsense , my boy , " Doc said . " You need food to help heal those bruises . Go on , son . I 'll bring you out something in a minute . " I didn 't see Donella as I walked out of the examination room and out into the hall . The waiting room , a large open area across the hall from the examination room was currently empty . There were a few antiques scattered around , but most of what I could see was designed for modern business . Doc 's office was also his home , a trim blue Victorian , so when I walked out the front door , I found myself on a porch that was probably larger then a few New York City apartments . The porch wrapped around the fronts and sides of the house . Sheriff Walker was sitting in a rocking chair near a porch swing . He waved at me to come over . I walked over to the porch swing and sat slowly , mindful of the new pain . Walker stopped rocking . " Okay , " he said , tell me what happened . " I told him almost everything , except for the Nazgul specter and the energy wave . He listened as I told him about the attack . " You know martial arts ? " " I see . I 'll place a call with the local detective in Maryland handling the case and see if he has anything I can use . " He looked at me . " You seems to be attracting trouble . " " Well , Myself , Charlie , Margaret Teague , Cathy , Damien Brackett , and Mister Blount . I never saw Blount , as he stayed in his office and was starting an appointment with Damien . Everyone else was within earshot . " " A few of the local churches have been hit by vandals , " Walker said . He paused to take another bite of his cake . " Kids probably , but it 's becoming a problem . Anyway , Donella , could you run Roger up to the cemetery to get his car ? " I told him about what Charlie had told me about the will and the stipulations I had to follow . " No one seems to know what Lucian did for a living except he was some sort of consultant . He cut all connections to his relatives , yet names me , not my dad or either one of his brothers , or any of the other relatives as sole heir . And even before I find out I 'm Lucian 's heir , I 'm attacked , because someone didn 't want me up here . And I 've just been attacked again for the same reason . So who is Lucian Merlin and what did he do ? " Walker was silent for a few moments , eating his cake . Finally , he said , " I can 't tell you Roger . Lucian was a private man who always kept his distance , yet when someone needed help , he was the first person there . He did a lot of good around here , and that 's what people will remember him for . " " He was lonely , " Donella said . We looked at her . " The sheriff 's right , Lucian was a private person , but there was a sadness in him . If you were around him long enough , you could see it . When I was thirteen or fourteen , I asked him why he was sad . He looked at me and said that he walked a path few can travel , and when he found someone to walk that path with , he lost her during the war . He said he never found another , but I think he never looked . " Walker put his now - empty plate down and stood . " I have to get going , " he said . " Roger , I 'll be in touch if there 's any developments or if I need to talk to you again . " I watched him walk away , then took a bite of my sandwich . Ham , cheese with tomato and lettuce , all topped with honey mustard . After the sheriff drove away , I chewed and swallowed , then looked at Donella . She looked back at me , and I felt myself begin to lose myself in her eyes . . We broke the gaze by mutual consent . " So , " I said . " Are gangs a problem up here ? " " Well , four of the local churches have been vandalized . From what I 've know , they did a real number on the altars , wrecking them so they can 't be used . There 's been a rash of farm animals disappearing , including several cows . A couple of weeks ago , they found the remains of a cow up on Table Rock . " " Yes . And that 's another thing that has the council upset , even though the sheriff turned the investigation over to the county detectives . Lucian was well like and respected by everyone around here . " I began to feel uneasy . Lucian 's death , the Nazgul wannabe , and this crime wave , all felt like they were connected . And not in a good way . " People are scared , Roger , " she continued . " I only go out at night if I have to work and even then it 's to the Inn and back again . Aunt Abby keeps a loaded shotgun by her bead and Leal Severine lets his dogs roam the estate at night . " She made an " O " with her mouth in surprise . " I didn 't tell you , did I ? We - Aunt Abby and I - live on Camelot . " " Oh , " she said . " Well , Leal isn 't like them . He 's a very simple man , honest , hard working . I don 't know how , but he keeps the estate grounds looking good all by himself . He was very devoted to Lucian . " " Doc loves to cook . A couple of times a year , he threatens to quit medicine and open up a café . " That got a mild chuckle out of me . Donella stood up . " Come on , " she said . " Let me get my jacket , then we 'd better get going . " The above is the logo for the series that I 'm outlining the novel I 've mentioned the last several posts . Created by Rick Chesler ( Thriller / suspense novelist : BLOOD HARBOR ( 12 / 10 / 13 ) ; Tara Shores series : SOLAR ISLAND ( 2012 ) , kiDNApped ( 2011 ) , WIRED KINGDOM ( 2010 ) ) , Outcast Ops is about a team of US specialists , who have , for one reason or another found themselves outside of the system . But just because they 're outside the system doesn 't mean they 're going to go quietly into the night . The world still needs their skills , and there are evil people who still threaten their fellow man . As of now , The name of the novel I 'm working on outlining right now is tentatively called African Firestorm , and I 've outlined it out to Chapter 29 . It 's still looking like the 40 - 45 chapters mark is still holding , but I think there 's a third of the novel left to outline , leading to the exciting climax , so we 'll see . ( I hope ! ) The bouquet of flowers was on the passenger seat when I pulled into the cemetery . Rolling Hills Cemetery was west of the town , on a hill overlooking the harbor The cemetery was surrounded by a five foot stone wall , with black iron spikes adding another foot . The gates were the same black iron . I drove in slowly , getting a long look at the place . The grass was green and well - tended , and the headstones were intact . A man was pushing a wheelbarrow toward me . I pulled the car next to him , stopped the car and rolled down my window . " Afternoon , " I said . The man put his wheelbarrow down and gave me a friendly smile . " Afternoon to you , sir ! " he said . " My name 's Dorsey , head groundskeeper . What can I do for you ? " He looked like he was in his mid - fifties , with a tanned , weather - beaten face , fit , with worn clothes , dirt - covered boots and a wide - brimmed hat . " Anyone , Lucian doesn 't have a grave . He has a tomb , near the top of the hill . You can see it from here , just look up and to the left . It 's the pure white one . " I scrunched down and looked out the passenger 's - side window and up the hill . The tomb was right where Dorsey described . " How do I get up there ? " I followed the directions , and was soon parked near Lucian 's tomb . I took the bouquet , got out of the car and looked around . Again , I felt I was being watched , but saw no one except Dorsey , and he was down near the front gates , raking up some leaves and ignoring me . I did another slow spin , but saw no one . It was cool and clear , with a light breeze blowing in from the sea . Otherwise , it was silent . No birds or insects sang their songs , and I was too far away from town to hear any noise from there . Even in this well - tended memorial park , the tomb stood out . It wasn 't very large , maybe eight feet wide , twice as deep and eight feet tall at its highest point . It was made of white marble , with symbols engraved on each stone block . I recognized only a few of them - the Ankh , some runes , and what looked like symbols from the book I Ching . Over the what had been the doorway , but was now a solid block of stone was the word MERLIN . Below that , carved in base - relief was the twin dragon holding a stone shaped into a form of a gem - just like my ring . I bowed my head and whispered a prayer for Lucian 's soul . There was a hollow calender cared from the stone that looked large enough to hold the flowers . I put the flowers into it , and was about to step back , when I felt the urge to touch the stone . I did so , placing my right palm flat against the door . I hadn 't intended on saying anything , but the words came out before I could stop them . " Uncle Lucian , I grieve for your death and I thank you for your kindness you have shown this town . Had the family known you were still alive , we would have visited you and made sure you were never alone . I will pray that the police find out who murdered you and bring them to justice . " I felt a subtle change in the energy around me . The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise . I knew something was happening , but I didn 't understand what . Several of the engravings seemed to start glowing , though it was hard to see it in the daylight . Then , without warning , I head a soft whisper . " I 'm sorry , Roger . " I yanked my hand away from the stone as quickly as I could . I looked around for any reason to explain what I 'd just heard . Nothing . I walked around the tomb and again , found nothing . I squared my shoulders walked up to the sealed door and placed my hand on the stone . I felt the energy again under my hand and the feeling of peacefulness flowed into me again . I closed my eyes this time and concentrated . I felt the energy and saw flashes of lights on my eyelids . Before I could ask for more information , I heard the squeals of wheels , and the sound of an engine , both getting closer and quickly . I opened my eyes and pulled my hand away . I turned and saw a black van coming up the road at a nearly insane speed . Something told me I was the reason they were here . I stepped back . " Who are you ? " I demanded . All I could see was a cloaked and hooded figure , with a void where the face would be . " Your enemy , " the figure replied as the van turned onto the road and raced toward us . It shot past my car and came to a stop in front of me in a cloud of smoke and squealing brakes . The side door slid open as the van came to a stop , and the same hooded thugs who 's jumped me in my apartment hopped out , plus one . Well , same in dress , ski masks , and weapons , baseball bats . One of the thugs pointed his bat at me . " You had you chance , " he growled . " You should have given us the letter when you had the chance ! " " We 'll take care of that now . You ain 't welcomed here in Pilgrim 's Cove , and now we 're going to make sure you regret ever coming here . " He looked at two of his friends . " Watch it , he knows some Kung - fu moves . Take him . " Two of the thugs came at me . I knew more than a few " Kung - Fu " moves , and unlike last time , I was alert and prepared . The first thug tried taking my head off with his first swing , But I ducked and sidestepped him , kicked him in the side of the knee and shoved him into the second thug , sending both of them sprawling . Before I could go after them , the head thug came at me , his swing scraping down my arm instead of landing on my collarbone . I yelled and kicked out , hitting him on the thigh instead of his groin , but it was enough to made him stumble back . I surged forward , punching him between the eyes . Before I could follow up , the fourth thug stepped forward and hit my left arm near the shoulder with his bat . I stumbled sideways , right into the path of one of the first two thugs who tried to double me over with a had swing into my solar plexus . I exhaled and tightened my stomach muscles just in time . The blow hurt , but I wasn 't disabled . With adrenaline surging through me , I grabbed the thug 's wrist and kicked him as hard as I could in the groin . He screamed and doubled over , and I followed up with a knee to the face . I felt his nose crack under the blow and I shoved him away . Thug four charged me , screaming at the top of his lungs . I stepped inside his swing , blocking his arm and slamming a palm into his nose , barking a short , sharp yell . His head snapped back and he fell on his ass . The head thug rushed me , swinging his bat fast and hard . I backpedaled , then ducked as the other unhurt thug tried taking my head off . I caught a glimpse of the hooded figure just standing there , watching the fight . As I stepped back to avoid a thrust , my right heel caught a buried rock and it threw my balance off . I stumbled back , and found myself leaning up against the tomb . There were now three thugs on their feet and number four was getting up . I put my hand on the tomb to steady myself . As I did so , energy flowed into me , lots of energy . I was suddenly full of energy and even more kept flowing in . " Lift your left hand and will the energy though it , " the whispers said . A wave of energy flowed out of my hand and slammed into the thugs , sending them flying . Two hit the van hard enough to stun them , while the other two were sent tumbling across the road and into the gravestones on the other side . Only the hooded creep was unaffected by the blast . Once the energy was gone , I dropped to one knee , and dropped my head , feeling like I 'd run a marathon while wearing weights . In the distance , I heard sirens , getting closer . I lifted my head . Creepy cloak was still standing there . " It appears I have underestimated you , Merlin , " it said , sounding like a snake . " I will not make that mistake again . " " No , " it replied . I have no idea if it was male , female or even human under that hood . It turned its head in the direction of the stunned thugs . " We must leave now . " The thugs were up on their feet , but moving slowly and in pain . I grinned nastily , but I had no energy of my own to do anything to add to their pain . They climbed into the van and roared off , even as the sirens got louder . Nazzy looked back at me . " Lord Zamaka will not be denied his reward , Heir of Merlin . The Black Guide will show him the way . " And , like a ghost , Nazzy faded away . I pushed myself into a sitting position , feeling drained . I head an electric motor A golf cart into sight , driven by Dorsey . He jerked to a stop and got out . " Are you all right ? " he asked . He knelt next to me . " I 'm sorry , but they faced into the park and nearly hit me ! When I saw where they were going , I called the Sheriff and told them what was happening ! " Dorsey nodded and ran back to his golf cart and roared off . I just sat there and let the pain hit me . " I looked up at the tomb . " I sure hope this is all worth it Uncle Lucian , " I said . As I look at the number of posts I 've made since the start of the year , I realize that I 've blogged more this year than the other two years . In fact , by the end of the month , I 'll have blogged more this year than the other two years combined . Guess I 'm still trying to step up my game . . . . Okay , first the update on the novel . It 's fully outlined through Chapter 24 , and rough outlined for Chapters 25 - 30 . It looks like the novels going to run 40 - 45 chapters by the time I 've finished the outlining . I sent what I 've done so far to my proposed co - author / originator of the series , and he likes it so far . But the proof will be in the writing itself . There is no one main reason to self - publish . It 's a number of factors , all have their own influence on my thinking . I have read many blogs from many different people who are farther along on their journey , and I am seeing things that enforces what I 'm seeing with my own eyes . Control of My Intellectual Property ( IP ) Rights - - - This has a big influence on my thinking . Any original story I write ( That isn 't linked to someone 's else 's IP ) is mine . I own everything in that story , and I should have the right to decide who gets what from those rights . The problem is these days , the Traditional Publishing Companies ( TPCs ) are demanding more and more rights from the writer . E - book rights , audio rights , foreign rights , and even movie and TV rights have become part of a lot of publishing contracts these days . Combined with contracts that are twisted and rigged to give the TPCs everything and the writer very little , it 's not worth giving up those rights for the thrill of seeing my book in print . Distrust of the TPCs - - - I have read blogs in which authors explained how the TPCs basically raked them over the coals , and earning nothing because the TPC screwed them over , either through incompetence or willful neglect . Things like " No - compete " clauses , reduced advances , accounting practices that make DC bureaucrats look like amateurs , and demanding every right they can think of are compounded by indifferent editing , little publicity , and a willingness to drop the author at the slightest reason . All that leads me to believe that if a novel I write fails , it should fail because of me , not because TPC screwed me over . Amount of Work - - - Most publishers don 't put out more than a book a year for an author . There are exceptions to this - - James Patterson and Clive Cussler come to mind - - but most authors have only one novel out at a time . ( A main reason who some authors use Pen names ) . Well and great if I have only one novel ready to go , but what if I have three novels ready , or several novellas ? Do I want to wait three years to publish all three novels , or figure out how to get novellas published ? By self - publishing , all three novels can be out in a year , finding readers and hopefully earning money . If I want to publish under my own name , a pen name of ten pen names , I decide when and how I release my work and in what form . That still means I have to write quality stories , but I don 't have to sit there with a stack of finished material , dribbling out a novel at a time . Freedom - - - That leads in from Amount of Work . I decide when and how I release my novel / novella / novelette / short story . I decide if I want to have an audio version , what the price of my work should be . I decide what cover my stories should have . I 'm on my own time table , not a TPC 's . I think that would have a better handle on what my story needs in the way of a cover , and how much PR I can put out and in what format . Money - - - Yes , it 's that low on the list . As a self - publisher ( or independent author ) , I receive no advance ( Which are shrinking rapidly ) . I do however , receive a larger percentage of royalties per book . And because e - books or Print on Demand ( POD ) never go out of print , I could earn money on a novel I wrote five or ten years ago . While I wouldn 't earn a lot per sale , say $ 2 . 50 per book , once I have enough stories published , I wouldn 't need that many sales per book . If my books each sells only ten copies a month ( $ 25 . 00 ) , and I have ten stories published , I 'm looking at $ 250 . 00 / month . Not a huge amount , but it would be constant , and grow each time I published a story . With the right PR , I could boost sales for a series , or offer special editions . I don 't need runaway bestsellers ( Though I would not complain if one of my stories did hit it big ) to make a living , And those are my thoughts as I see it right now . Can my thoughts change ? Yes . I expect that I will be altering my thoughts a lot over the next few years , as I start digging into the new soil of being an Independent Author . Well , I 'm up to Chapter 20 in the outlining process , and it 's going well so far . The genre of this novel is action / adventure / Thriller , and I 've always been a fan of those sort of novels , The co - author wants to keep each chapter to five or six pages , so I 'm working the narrative to suit the action . After I finish the outline , I 'll tell you more about the series , because by then , I hope to have more to tell you about . We both turned and looked behind us . Standing there was a tall statuesque redhead with green eyes and a sly smile on her ruby - red lips . She was dressed in a business suit with a knee - high skirt and low - heel shoes , but despite being conservatively dressed , she somehow make the outfit alluring . She smiled widen when I she looked at me , and I felt like a piece of meat dangling in front of a hungry lion . She moved toward us , her walk more like a stalk . " Who 's your friend ? " I cannot stress the beauty of this woman . It wasn 't the girl next door type of beauty , but the wild - weekend - in - Vegas - that - you - will - never - tell - your - mother - type of enchantress . I felt my heart beat faster and blood run to places that it shouldn 't in a the middle of a lawyer 's office . " Yes , yes , " Windicott said , his breaths fast and short . " Margaret , this is Roger Merlin , Lucian 's great - nephew . Roger is is one of my associates , Margaret Teague . " Her smile became wider . " Lucian 's kin , huh ? , " she said . She turned her head to look at Windicott . " Don 't you have to get ready for court ? " she asked , her silkily - smooth voice laced with steel . After he hurried back to his office and close his door , Margaret looked at me . " Well , " she breathed . " I never knew Lucian had such a handsome great nephew . " In the back of my head , alarms were going off . I 'm an all right looking guy , but AJ 's is not only better looking , he has the person skills I don 't . I felt my face getting flush and I looked around , . We were alone , and I felt my heart beating faster . When I looked back , I found myself staring into two large green eyes that promised so much . She was standing inches from me , having stepped close when I was distracted . " Are you doing anything tonight ? " she whispered . " We could have dinner . I know a lot about Lucian and could tell you everything . " She reached out to caress my arm , but as she did so , there was a burst of static electricity , shocking both of us . We jumped back , and the spell was broken . Margaret 's expression darkened and she glanced down at my hand . " The ring ! " she snapped . " When did you get the ring ? " Damien shot me an ugly look . I shot him an ugly look . While we were staring at each other , the door opened somewhere behind me and Cathy 's voice said , " Mister Brackett ? Mister Blount will see you now . " Damien waked toward me , and I braced myself for a shoulder bump . Instead , he walked past me without contact , walked past Margaret and into another office . Margaret gave me a half smile that was more cruel than sexy , then walked into another office . He nodded and gave me directions . We walked out and parted ways outside the office . I walked back to my car but just as I reached it , I felt eyes upon me . I did a full , slow spin , but saw no one looking at me . There were several dozen people in sight , all going about their own business . I looked around again , and this time , I spotted Mister Brawn sitting on a bench in the park , half - hidden behind a lamppost . He was throwing breadcrumbs on the ground in front of him , but there were no birds anywhere near him . He looked in my direction , saw me looking at him , got up and walked away . I watched him until he crossed the street on the other side of the park and enter the bakery . I waited a couple more minutes , but he didn 't reappear . I shrugged it off and was about to get into the car , when I changed my mind and started walking toward the florist . |
Not much to report on the last couple of days . Been working through the Valiant RPG stuff , discussing a few things with other writers involved , and finally coming to a decision about how to complete this task . Nothing new on African Firestorm , beyond how I 'm going to write the next chapter . Still researching though . We 'd driven back to the Nesbille house , where Charlie dropped us off . He said he had a couple of legal matters to finish up , but he 'd be back in time for dinner . I was going to go into town on my own until Donella said , " I 'll go with you . If you 're going to be living here , you might as well get to know the locals . Besides , I know where everything is . " We parked in the town square , near the hardware shop . We got out and looked around . There were a few more people around , all the businesses were open , and all the charm of small - town life were on display . " Hardware store , " I replied , looking at the business in question . WIHITE HARDWARE , it read over the door . Danella gave me a puzzled look , but shrugged and followed me . We walked across the road and into the hardware store . The smell of wood and oil tickled my nose as we walked in . There were four parallel aisles of hardware and equipment , stocked with the sort of items you would expect to find in a hardware store . 1950 's era music was playing over the store 's sound system . A counter was to out right as we came in . An older man was behind the counter . He was taller than me by several inches , and thin . His graying hair was nearly combed , but his eyebrows were in major need of a trimming . Dark brown eyes gazed out from behind a pair of thick glasses two decades out of date . " Donella ! " he said cheerfully . " It 's been awhile . How 's Abby ? " " She 's fine , " Donella replied agreeable . " Mister Wihite , I need to introduce you to someone . Roger , this is Mister Wihite , who owns this store . Mister Wihite , this is Roger Merlin , Lucian 's great - nephew . " I saw Wihite 's eyes light up with interest . He held out a boney hand . " Welcome to Pilgrim 's Cove , Mister Merlin , " he said . " When did you get into town ? " He nodded . " Good . Hope to see more of you . If you 'll excuse me . " Another customer , Another thin fellow with little hair and a beak for a nose , came to the counter while we were talking . I stepped back and let Wihite handle the customer . I leaned in . " I 'm competing with Lucian 's ghost , " I whispered . " Everyone loved him , now he 's gone and they 're expecting me to pick up where he left off . " " Then be Roger Merlin , " she said , his eyes locking with mine . " I don 't think you were raised too differently than he was . " I found myself staring into those eyes , losing any objections I had . We blinked at the same time , and Donella said , " Let 's get what you want and get out of here . " We spent the next ten minutes going around the store . A radio , two bundles of firewood , matches , and a lantern ( with extra batteries ) went into the cart . Donella began frowning when I added a hatchet , a baseball bat , a six - foot tall , one - inch diameter dowel rod , and a few wooden stakes to the cart . " It 's just a night in the house , " she said . " Tell that to my bruises . " I tossed in a couple of large packages of beef jerky and a large bag of trail mix into the cart . " I 'm going to be in a large house , all by myself , and there 's people who have twice tried to kill me , or at the very least , tried putting me into the hospital . I would prefer to over prepare and not need everything then to be under - prepared . " We both turned and saw Margaret Teague walking toward us . She was still wearing her business suit from this morning , though she had a basket on one arm . She gave me a brief , disapproving look , then beamed at Donella . " Nonsense ! " Margaret said . " Abby is able to take care of herself . It 's time you started living your own life , and the first step in that path is college . " " College is important ! " Margaret said . " You are a bright and hardworking woman who will go far in the world . Or do you want to stay here and marry someone like him ? " she waved a hand at me . " Why not take some on - line courses ? " I said . " Pick a couple of classes that 'll transfer to any college and take them . If you feel comfortable , then you can transfer to a college in person . " " I 'll think about it , " Donella said quickly . " If you 'll excuse me a minute , I just remembered that I need to pick up some hooks for Aunt Abby . " She hurried off . I watched Donella until she disappeared , then turn back to find myself staring into a pair of green eyes . Only they were not playful , but hard and unyielding . " I will tell you only once , Merlin , " Margaret growled . " If you ever harm Donella in any way , I will make sure they never find your body , is that clear ? " My temper flared up , and instead of backing away , I leaned in , so we were nose to nose . " You listen to me , " I growled . " I do not hurt women , in any way . I would cut off my right arm before I would willing hurt her . Do I make myself clear ? " There was a brief flash of surprise in Margaret 's eyes , and she pulled back . " Maybe Lucian didn 't make a mistake , " she murmured , then smiled . " It may come down to doing that , Merlin . Enjoy your ' camping trip . ' " She turned and walked away , though the walk was more of a strut . I merely shook my head and continued shopping . Simply put , I forgot about it . I 've been working on the Valiant RPG , trying to find any scraps of information I can use for the characters I 'm responsible for . That means lurking around Valiant message boards , podcasts about the comic lines , and any wiki I can find . The 90s versions of these characters are vastly different ( Including one that doesn 't exist in the previous era ! ) , and can supply little more than a quote or two and some minor details that I can use . Still , I 've got most of the characters stats laid out , and I hope my approach to the background that has to combine three versions of the same character into one will meet with Valiant 's approval . I 've also been googling stuff for African Firestorm . Locations , vehicles , weapons , and even language . Every detail I need to I need to write what I hope will be a great action thriller . The outline is complete through Chapter 35 , and I 'm still on course for my estimate . It 's a bit of a challenge , as this is the first time I 've done an outline in such detail before . We took Charlie 's Lincoln up to the house , some three hundred years in the opposite direction from the Nesbille house . The house was hidden by trees until we were almost on top of it , but when the last trees were past , it showed an unusual and somewhat foreboding , house . My first thought when I saw it was " Castle . " Two large round towers were connected to each other by a square middle section , all made from the same stone I 'd seen in the other buildings on the estate . The windows were narrow and each one barred with a single iron bar running lengthwise and one width - wise set into the stone . Charlie parked the car in front of the middle section . We got out and I craned my neck to look up . " Wow , " I said . " Impressive , isn 't it ? " Charlie said . " Yes , in a highly mediaeval way . " " The view from the tower top is breathtaking , " Donella said . Without warning , a pack of dogs appeared from every direction and surrounded us . All were large , well muscled animals , Pit Bulls , Mastiffs and a couple of other breeds I didn 't recognize . Then as one , they sat and stared at us . A large man came around the side of the house . And I do mean large . He was pushing seven feet and broadly built . His face was broad with shaggy dark hair and half - closed eyes . His scowl was fearsome , and he held a stick that would be a baseball bat in anyone else 's hands . His clothing consisted of a shirt , army jacket , cargo pants tucked into hard - worn work boots . He stopped behind the dogs and glared at us . Donella stepped forward . " Leal , " she said softly . " Miss Donella , " Leal said gruffly . He looked at the Lawyer . " Mister Charlie . he looked at me . " I don 't know you . " " That 's Roger Merlin , " Donella said . " He 's the new owner of the estate . Lucian left the estate to him . " " I want to see the ring , " Leal said , his voice sounding like it was coming out of a cave . " Mister Lucian said that the owner of the estate would be wearing the ring . " I held up my right hand . " This ring ? " Leal stared at it for * * * Well , my writing for the Valiant Comics RPG stands at @ 1 , 500 words . My subject isn 't the most documented character in the universe ( At least , not this time around ) . Need to go looking for any scraps of data I can find about this character . I followed Donella back into town and then north onto a two - lane road called Bayfront . As soon as we cleared the town , the walls appeared on my right , while the left was thick woods . The walls were ten feet tall , topped with black iron spikes that bent outwards . Several minutes later , Donella slowed and turned right , into a driveway bordered by two large , heavy - looking black iron gates , with closely set bars . I followed Donella through the gates and up a long driveway . Trees groves and grass bordered the driveway . Near the gate , on my left , a small , single - story house sat , made from the same colored stone the estate 's walls were made from . . A larger building sat next to the house , a barn , from the size of the doors on it . I saw a couple of large dogs in the yard looked up as we passed them , and in the rear - view mirror , I saw them rise to their feet and follow . A large pond appeared on my left , surrounded by a few trees . Just past the pond , Donella turned right onto another driveway . I followed , and saw a small , near - looking , two - story house , again , made from the same stone as the estate 's wall and the house we 'd passed on the way in . To my left , I could see the Atlantic Ocean . The ground between the driveway and the cliff was the length of a football field , mostly grass and open until it reached a few trees that helped screen the near - constant wind coming off the ocean . Beyond the trees , the rolling whitecaps of the sea water sent up sprays of mist . The driveway flared out into an area large enough for several cars to park side by side . There were already two cars there . One , like Donella 's was an older Honda , while the other was a late - model Lincoln . I parked next to Donella , who parked next to the Lincoln . There was a chill in the air as I got out . There was a wind coming in from the ocean , and despite the trees near the cliffs , it cut through my windbreaker as if it wasn 't there . Despite the sun , I felt cold . I followed Donella to the house . The house had a solid permanence to it , but there were a few softening touches , like the well - tended flowerbeds and potted plants . A porch ran along the front and the right side of the house , not as wide as Doc 's but enough for several people to stand together without crowding . Donella opened a screen door , then a door that looked thick enough to stand in for armor plating . " Aunt Abby ! " she called out as she entered . " I 'm home and I brought a guest ! " I followed Donella into a small , neatly furnished sitting room . With the exception of a big screen TV against one wall and a phone on another wall , the room could have been transported as is from the 1890s . A pair of overstuffed chairs , another pair of love seats , a sideboard , two end tables and a bookcase were the major pieces . There were two people in the room , sitting on different love seats . One was a woman in the late fifties , early sixties , wearing a purple sweater over an ankle - length skirt . Next to her , a black cat laid curled up in a ball , watching me . Her hair was brown , shot through with gray , done up into a ponytail . Wrinkles around the eyes and corners of her mouth were the only sign of age on her face . Clear brown eyes swept past Donella and locked onto me . She looked me up and down , then smiled . " Hello ! " she said . " And who are you ? " The other person turned around and I saw it was Charles Windicott . " Roger ! " he exclaimed , getting to his feet . " Are you all right ? I ran into Sheriff Walker at the courthouse right before I came out here and told me you 'd been attacked ! " ' Tell me what happened , " Charlie said . " When Sheriff Walker told me what happened , he didn 't go into any details . " I gave him the same basic story I gave the sheriff and Donella . He sank back into his seat and shook his head . " My god , " he whispered . " I never realized how much trouble you 'd been in . " " Somebody doesn 't want me up here , " I said . " No , " I replied . " I 'm not about to throw in the towel . I 'll go through with the stay tonight , as planned . " " Good ! ' Charlie said . The cat hopped off Donella 's lap and onto the floor . It padded over to me and I reached down to present my hand to it . It sniffed my hand , then sat down and looked at me . I looked back . The cat 's eyes were large , pale yellow , and strangely intelligent . Just then , Abby came back into the room with a tray and collapsible stand . She opened the stand and put the tray on top of it . " Here you go , " she said . " Cream and sugar ? " She filled and passed out the teacups , then returned to sit down next to Donella . " Now , " she said , looking at . " Why don 't you tell us a little bit about yourself ? " " Antie , " Donella said in a warning tone . " he 's not a suspect . Be nice . " " Lucian and I had coffee many times when you were at work , " Abby replied . " Lucian mentioned his family a few times and Roger in particular . I just wanted to see what sort of man he is . " Donella frowned , but before she could say anything , I said , " There 's not much to say . " I recited the same background I 'd told Donella in the car . She asked a few family questions , mostly about who the members of the family were , making a couple of mistakes that I corrected her on . She moved the conversation onto other subjects , and we spent forty - five minutes talking about local issues . Cachmawri laid on my lap , eyes closed in sleep . Finally , Charlie looked at his watch . " I think we 'd better cut this short , " he said . " I want to show Roger the main house before tonight . " " Good ! " Abby said , picking up the tray . " Donella , why don 't you go with them ? You know the house better then Charlie does . " So , I need to find out as much as I can about the one title I 'm responsible for . The problem is I have only the current series to draw from ( the previous series can 't be considered , as there are major differences between the two series , even though they 're about the same characters . ) The current series is short , and the latest I can 't draw from for several reasons . The fun of being a writer . . . . Donella 's car was a six - year old Honda that still looked in good shape . As she drove me out to the graveyard , she told me a little bit about herself . Both her parents were dead , and her Aunt Abby , her father 's older sister , had taken the young girl into his care and taken a desk job to give her niece some stability . Once Donella had graduated from high school , Abby retired from the FBI and moved to Pilgrim 's Cove . Instead of going to college , Donella had chosen to come with Abby , " to help settle her in . " That had been three years ago . " The owner of the house we were renting wanted to sell it . Aunt Abby made an offer , buit the owner didn 't want to sell it at that price . Then Carlton Brackett bought the house and gave us thirty days to get out . " Donella nodded . " Aunt Abby was mad and went down to the bank to give Carlton a piece of her mind . She ran into Lucian , told him the story and he offered her one of the houses on the estate . We 've been there two years . But enough about me . What about you ? " I gave her the same Cliff Notes of my life I 'd given the Sheriff the night before , and added a few details I 'd left out . My parents were retired , my older sister worked for the Department of Defense , while my younger brother was a sophomore at the U of MD . She listened to me talk about the few times I met Lucian . " He was the last of four children , " I said . " Grandpa , Great - Aunt Evelyn , Great - Uncle David , and Great - Uncle Lucian . Between them , they had twelve children and twenty - two grandchildren . Now , they 're all gone . " I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly . " All we have left now are memories . And I have so few of Uncle Lucian . " Three minutes later , we reached the cemetery and drove through the gates . Dorsey was near the gate . Donella slowed the car and rolled down the window . The older man smiled when he saw who it was . " Afternoon , Miss Donella , " he said . " What can I do for you ? " " Aye , that you did , " he said . He looked at Donella . I was driving up after I called the cops , and I got to the top there , " he motioned to the top of the hill , " When bam ! All four toughs go flying like twigs in a high wind . Then they got into the van and drove off . " Dorsey took off his hat and scratched his head . " Funny you ask that sir , " he said . " I could have swore there was a fifth person there . I didn 't see their face , on account they were facing away from me , but the were wearing a long black cloak . " He inhaled slowly . " But it could have been a freak shadow , because by the time I got close , it had vanished . " We walked toward Lucian 's tomb . I noticed the burnt rubber on the road from the van 's sudden stop and start . I looked around , but saw no traces of the fight , beyond some torn - up grass . We reached the tomb . It looked untouched . I went up and placed my hand on one of the stones that had been used to fill in the doorway . I felt the power under my fingertips . " Could you come here for a second ? " Sighing in resignation , she put her hand on the stone and gave me a " Why are we doing this ? " look . After a few seconds , her expression changed to puzzlement and she pulled her hand away from the stone . She put her hand on the stone again . " I feel something , " she said . Well , African Firestorm is up to Chapter 30 in the outlining stage , but I 'm going to have to downgrade priority on that , as I 've got a writing assignment from Catalyst Game Labs that 's due April 1st ( no joke ) , for my first non - Battletech game writing assignment . It 's time to expand my writing experience into another area . This is for a new RPG , which should be announced Monday ( That 's what Randall says in his tweet , at any rate ) . They didn 't catch the van , but did put an APB out for it . Sheriff Walker , who was leading the rescue force , insisted that I be checked out by the town 's doctor . He drove me back into town and soon I was sitting on and examination table , waiting for the Doctor . Doc Weatherbee came in , He was in his mid - 50s , and strongly resembled a beardless Santa Claus . His hair was snow - white , but still thick and full , and wore rimless spectacles on a bulbous nose . His lab coat was bright white , but the Hawaii shirt and shorts he wore under it did make him look a little odd . " We can fill in the paperwork later , " he said in a low , rumbling voice . " Let 's take a look at you . Shirt and shoes off , please . " I removed my shirt , shoes , and undid my pants . Doc raised an eyebrow when he saw the old bruises and the new ones . " Looks like this isn 't your first scuffle with someone . " " Well , you still have a sense of humor . That 's good . " He spent a few minutes poking and prodding me , going " hmmm , " and asking questions like " Does this hurt ? " I had to answer " yes " to the shot I 'd taken across the stomach in the arm and the graze I 'd taken on the other arm . He also looked at my other bruises and seemed satisfied that they were healing . After twenty minutes , he said , " looks like you have a few more bruises , but nothing 's broken . I suggest you avoid any bar brawls , mosh pits , or reenactments of the battle of Hastings for the next couple of weeks and let these bruises heal up before you add any more . " There was a knock at the door and Donella walked in . " Doc , " she said , staring down at a clipboard , " I need - " She looked up and stopped when she saw I was half - naked . " Oh . " Doc looked from me to Donella and back to me again , raising an eyebrow . " He 's all right , Donella , " he said . " He could stand to lose about twenty pounds , but he 's healthy and fit . " They left and I scrambled into my clothes as fast as I could . I had finished button up my shirt when there was a knock on the door and Doc stuck his head in . " Sheriff wants to talk to you , " he said . I glanced at my watch . It was nearly one o ' clock and my stomach rumbled . Doc 's eyebrow went up again . " I 'll see about getting you something to eat , too , " " Nonsense , my boy , " Doc said . " You need food to help heal those bruises . Go on , son . I 'll bring you out something in a minute . " I didn 't see Donella as I walked out of the examination room and out into the hall . The waiting room , a large open area across the hall from the examination room was currently empty . There were a few antiques scattered around , but most of what I could see was designed for modern business . Doc 's office was also his home , a trim blue Victorian , so when I walked out the front door , I found myself on a porch that was probably larger then a few New York City apartments . The porch wrapped around the fronts and sides of the house . Sheriff Walker was sitting in a rocking chair near a porch swing . He waved at me to come over . I walked over to the porch swing and sat slowly , mindful of the new pain . Walker stopped rocking . " Okay , " he said , tell me what happened . " I told him almost everything , except for the Nazgul specter and the energy wave . He listened as I told him about the attack . " You know martial arts ? " " I see . I 'll place a call with the local detective in Maryland handling the case and see if he has anything I can use . " He looked at me . " You seems to be attracting trouble . " " Well , Myself , Charlie , Margaret Teague , Cathy , Damien Brackett , and Mister Blount . I never saw Blount , as he stayed in his office and was starting an appointment with Damien . Everyone else was within earshot . " " A few of the local churches have been hit by vandals , " Walker said . He paused to take another bite of his cake . " Kids probably , but it 's becoming a problem . Anyway , Donella , could you run Roger up to the cemetery to get his car ? " I told him about what Charlie had told me about the will and the stipulations I had to follow . " No one seems to know what Lucian did for a living except he was some sort of consultant . He cut all connections to his relatives , yet names me , not my dad or either one of his brothers , or any of the other relatives as sole heir . And even before I find out I 'm Lucian 's heir , I 'm attacked , because someone didn 't want me up here . And I 've just been attacked again for the same reason . So who is Lucian Merlin and what did he do ? " Walker was silent for a few moments , eating his cake . Finally , he said , " I can 't tell you Roger . Lucian was a private man who always kept his distance , yet when someone needed help , he was the first person there . He did a lot of good around here , and that 's what people will remember him for . " " He was lonely , " Donella said . We looked at her . " The sheriff 's right , Lucian was a private person , but there was a sadness in him . If you were around him long enough , you could see it . When I was thirteen or fourteen , I asked him why he was sad . He looked at me and said that he walked a path few can travel , and when he found someone to walk that path with , he lost her during the war . He said he never found another , but I think he never looked . " Walker put his now - empty plate down and stood . " I have to get going , " he said . " Roger , I 'll be in touch if there 's any developments or if I need to talk to you again . " I watched him walk away , then took a bite of my sandwich . Ham , cheese with tomato and lettuce , all topped with honey mustard . After the sheriff drove away , I chewed and swallowed , then looked at Donella . She looked back at me , and I felt myself begin to lose myself in her eyes . . We broke the gaze by mutual consent . " So , " I said . " Are gangs a problem up here ? " " Well , four of the local churches have been vandalized . From what I 've know , they did a real number on the altars , wrecking them so they can 't be used . There 's been a rash of farm animals disappearing , including several cows . A couple of weeks ago , they found the remains of a cow up on Table Rock . " " Yes . And that 's another thing that has the council upset , even though the sheriff turned the investigation over to the county detectives . Lucian was well like and respected by everyone around here . " I began to feel uneasy . Lucian 's death , the Nazgul wannabe , and this crime wave , all felt like they were connected . And not in a good way . " People are scared , Roger , " she continued . " I only go out at night if I have to work and even then it 's to the Inn and back again . Aunt Abby keeps a loaded shotgun by her bead and Leal Severine lets his dogs roam the estate at night . " She made an " O " with her mouth in surprise . " I didn 't tell you , did I ? We - Aunt Abby and I - live on Camelot . " " Oh , " she said . " Well , Leal isn 't like them . He 's a very simple man , honest , hard working . I don 't know how , but he keeps the estate grounds looking good all by himself . He was very devoted to Lucian . " " Doc loves to cook . A couple of times a year , he threatens to quit medicine and open up a café . " That got a mild chuckle out of me . Donella stood up . " Come on , " she said . " Let me get my jacket , then we 'd better get going . " The above is the logo for the series that I 'm outlining the novel I 've mentioned the last several posts . Created by Rick Chesler ( Thriller / suspense novelist : BLOOD HARBOR ( 12 / 10 / 13 ) ; Tara Shores series : SOLAR ISLAND ( 2012 ) , kiDNApped ( 2011 ) , WIRED KINGDOM ( 2010 ) ) , Outcast Ops is about a team of US specialists , who have , for one reason or another found themselves outside of the system . But just because they 're outside the system doesn 't mean they 're going to go quietly into the night . The world still needs their skills , and there are evil people who still threaten their fellow man . As of now , The name of the novel I 'm working on outlining right now is tentatively called African Firestorm , and I 've outlined it out to Chapter 29 . It 's still looking like the 40 - 45 chapters mark is still holding , but I think there 's a third of the novel left to outline , leading to the exciting climax , so we 'll see . ( I hope ! ) The bouquet of flowers was on the passenger seat when I pulled into the cemetery . Rolling Hills Cemetery was west of the town , on a hill overlooking the harbor The cemetery was surrounded by a five foot stone wall , with black iron spikes adding another foot . The gates were the same black iron . I drove in slowly , getting a long look at the place . The grass was green and well - tended , and the headstones were intact . A man was pushing a wheelbarrow toward me . I pulled the car next to him , stopped the car and rolled down my window . " Afternoon , " I said . The man put his wheelbarrow down and gave me a friendly smile . " Afternoon to you , sir ! " he said . " My name 's Dorsey , head groundskeeper . What can I do for you ? " He looked like he was in his mid - fifties , with a tanned , weather - beaten face , fit , with worn clothes , dirt - covered boots and a wide - brimmed hat . " Anyone , Lucian doesn 't have a grave . He has a tomb , near the top of the hill . You can see it from here , just look up and to the left . It 's the pure white one . " I scrunched down and looked out the passenger 's - side window and up the hill . The tomb was right where Dorsey described . " How do I get up there ? " I followed the directions , and was soon parked near Lucian 's tomb . I took the bouquet , got out of the car and looked around . Again , I felt I was being watched , but saw no one except Dorsey , and he was down near the front gates , raking up some leaves and ignoring me . I did another slow spin , but saw no one . It was cool and clear , with a light breeze blowing in from the sea . Otherwise , it was silent . No birds or insects sang their songs , and I was too far away from town to hear any noise from there . Even in this well - tended memorial park , the tomb stood out . It wasn 't very large , maybe eight feet wide , twice as deep and eight feet tall at its highest point . It was made of white marble , with symbols engraved on each stone block . I recognized only a few of them - the Ankh , some runes , and what looked like symbols from the book I Ching . Over the what had been the doorway , but was now a solid block of stone was the word MERLIN . Below that , carved in base - relief was the twin dragon holding a stone shaped into a form of a gem - just like my ring . I bowed my head and whispered a prayer for Lucian 's soul . There was a hollow calender cared from the stone that looked large enough to hold the flowers . I put the flowers into it , and was about to step back , when I felt the urge to touch the stone . I did so , placing my right palm flat against the door . I hadn 't intended on saying anything , but the words came out before I could stop them . " Uncle Lucian , I grieve for your death and I thank you for your kindness you have shown this town . Had the family known you were still alive , we would have visited you and made sure you were never alone . I will pray that the police find out who murdered you and bring them to justice . " I felt a subtle change in the energy around me . The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise . I knew something was happening , but I didn 't understand what . Several of the engravings seemed to start glowing , though it was hard to see it in the daylight . Then , without warning , I head a soft whisper . " I 'm sorry , Roger . " I yanked my hand away from the stone as quickly as I could . I looked around for any reason to explain what I 'd just heard . Nothing . I walked around the tomb and again , found nothing . I squared my shoulders walked up to the sealed door and placed my hand on the stone . I felt the energy again under my hand and the feeling of peacefulness flowed into me again . I closed my eyes this time and concentrated . I felt the energy and saw flashes of lights on my eyelids . Before I could ask for more information , I heard the squeals of wheels , and the sound of an engine , both getting closer and quickly . I opened my eyes and pulled my hand away . I turned and saw a black van coming up the road at a nearly insane speed . Something told me I was the reason they were here . I stepped back . " Who are you ? " I demanded . All I could see was a cloaked and hooded figure , with a void where the face would be . " Your enemy , " the figure replied as the van turned onto the road and raced toward us . It shot past my car and came to a stop in front of me in a cloud of smoke and squealing brakes . The side door slid open as the van came to a stop , and the same hooded thugs who 's jumped me in my apartment hopped out , plus one . Well , same in dress , ski masks , and weapons , baseball bats . One of the thugs pointed his bat at me . " You had you chance , " he growled . " You should have given us the letter when you had the chance ! " " We 'll take care of that now . You ain 't welcomed here in Pilgrim 's Cove , and now we 're going to make sure you regret ever coming here . " He looked at two of his friends . " Watch it , he knows some Kung - fu moves . Take him . " Two of the thugs came at me . I knew more than a few " Kung - Fu " moves , and unlike last time , I was alert and prepared . The first thug tried taking my head off with his first swing , But I ducked and sidestepped him , kicked him in the side of the knee and shoved him into the second thug , sending both of them sprawling . Before I could go after them , the head thug came at me , his swing scraping down my arm instead of landing on my collarbone . I yelled and kicked out , hitting him on the thigh instead of his groin , but it was enough to made him stumble back . I surged forward , punching him between the eyes . Before I could follow up , the fourth thug stepped forward and hit my left arm near the shoulder with his bat . I stumbled sideways , right into the path of one of the first two thugs who tried to double me over with a had swing into my solar plexus . I exhaled and tightened my stomach muscles just in time . The blow hurt , but I wasn 't disabled . With adrenaline surging through me , I grabbed the thug 's wrist and kicked him as hard as I could in the groin . He screamed and doubled over , and I followed up with a knee to the face . I felt his nose crack under the blow and I shoved him away . Thug four charged me , screaming at the top of his lungs . I stepped inside his swing , blocking his arm and slamming a palm into his nose , barking a short , sharp yell . His head snapped back and he fell on his ass . The head thug rushed me , swinging his bat fast and hard . I backpedaled , then ducked as the other unhurt thug tried taking my head off . I caught a glimpse of the hooded figure just standing there , watching the fight . As I stepped back to avoid a thrust , my right heel caught a buried rock and it threw my balance off . I stumbled back , and found myself leaning up against the tomb . There were now three thugs on their feet and number four was getting up . I put my hand on the tomb to steady myself . As I did so , energy flowed into me , lots of energy . I was suddenly full of energy and even more kept flowing in . " Lift your left hand and will the energy though it , " the whispers said . A wave of energy flowed out of my hand and slammed into the thugs , sending them flying . Two hit the van hard enough to stun them , while the other two were sent tumbling across the road and into the gravestones on the other side . Only the hooded creep was unaffected by the blast . Once the energy was gone , I dropped to one knee , and dropped my head , feeling like I 'd run a marathon while wearing weights . In the distance , I heard sirens , getting closer . I lifted my head . Creepy cloak was still standing there . " It appears I have underestimated you , Merlin , " it said , sounding like a snake . " I will not make that mistake again . " " No , " it replied . I have no idea if it was male , female or even human under that hood . It turned its head in the direction of the stunned thugs . " We must leave now . " The thugs were up on their feet , but moving slowly and in pain . I grinned nastily , but I had no energy of my own to do anything to add to their pain . They climbed into the van and roared off , even as the sirens got louder . Nazzy looked back at me . " Lord Zamaka will not be denied his reward , Heir of Merlin . The Black Guide will show him the way . " And , like a ghost , Nazzy faded away . I pushed myself into a sitting position , feeling drained . I head an electric motor A golf cart into sight , driven by Dorsey . He jerked to a stop and got out . " Are you all right ? " he asked . He knelt next to me . " I 'm sorry , but they faced into the park and nearly hit me ! When I saw where they were going , I called the Sheriff and told them what was happening ! " Dorsey nodded and ran back to his golf cart and roared off . I just sat there and let the pain hit me . " I looked up at the tomb . " I sure hope this is all worth it Uncle Lucian , " I said . As I look at the number of posts I 've made since the start of the year , I realize that I 've blogged more this year than the other two years . In fact , by the end of the month , I 'll have blogged more this year than the other two years combined . Guess I 'm still trying to step up my game . . . . Okay , first the update on the novel . It 's fully outlined through Chapter 24 , and rough outlined for Chapters 25 - 30 . It looks like the novels going to run 40 - 45 chapters by the time I 've finished the outlining . I sent what I 've done so far to my proposed co - author / originator of the series , and he likes it so far . But the proof will be in the writing itself . There is no one main reason to self - publish . It 's a number of factors , all have their own influence on my thinking . I have read many blogs from many different people who are farther along on their journey , and I am seeing things that enforces what I 'm seeing with my own eyes . Control of My Intellectual Property ( IP ) Rights - - - This has a big influence on my thinking . Any original story I write ( That isn 't linked to someone 's else 's IP ) is mine . I own everything in that story , and I should have the right to decide who gets what from those rights . The problem is these days , the Traditional Publishing Companies ( TPCs ) are demanding more and more rights from the writer . E - book rights , audio rights , foreign rights , and even movie and TV rights have become part of a lot of publishing contracts these days . Combined with contracts that are twisted and rigged to give the TPCs everything and the writer very little , it 's not worth giving up those rights for the thrill of seeing my book in print . Distrust of the TPCs - - - I have read blogs in which authors explained how the TPCs basically raked them over the coals , and earning nothing because the TPC screwed them over , either through incompetence or willful neglect . Things like " No - compete " clauses , reduced advances , accounting practices that make DC bureaucrats look like amateurs , and demanding every right they can think of are compounded by indifferent editing , little publicity , and a willingness to drop the author at the slightest reason . All that leads me to believe that if a novel I write fails , it should fail because of me , not because TPC screwed me over . Amount of Work - - - Most publishers don 't put out more than a book a year for an author . There are exceptions to this - - James Patterson and Clive Cussler come to mind - - but most authors have only one novel out at a time . ( A main reason who some authors use Pen names ) . Well and great if I have only one novel ready to go , but what if I have three novels ready , or several novellas ? Do I want to wait three years to publish all three novels , or figure out how to get novellas published ? By self - publishing , all three novels can be out in a year , finding readers and hopefully earning money . If I want to publish under my own name , a pen name of ten pen names , I decide when and how I release my work and in what form . That still means I have to write quality stories , but I don 't have to sit there with a stack of finished material , dribbling out a novel at a time . Freedom - - - That leads in from Amount of Work . I decide when and how I release my novel / novella / novelette / short story . I decide if I want to have an audio version , what the price of my work should be . I decide what cover my stories should have . I 'm on my own time table , not a TPC 's . I think that would have a better handle on what my story needs in the way of a cover , and how much PR I can put out and in what format . Money - - - Yes , it 's that low on the list . As a self - publisher ( or independent author ) , I receive no advance ( Which are shrinking rapidly ) . I do however , receive a larger percentage of royalties per book . And because e - books or Print on Demand ( POD ) never go out of print , I could earn money on a novel I wrote five or ten years ago . While I wouldn 't earn a lot per sale , say $ 2 . 50 per book , once I have enough stories published , I wouldn 't need that many sales per book . If my books each sells only ten copies a month ( $ 25 . 00 ) , and I have ten stories published , I 'm looking at $ 250 . 00 / month . Not a huge amount , but it would be constant , and grow each time I published a story . With the right PR , I could boost sales for a series , or offer special editions . I don 't need runaway bestsellers ( Though I would not complain if one of my stories did hit it big ) to make a living , And those are my thoughts as I see it right now . Can my thoughts change ? Yes . I expect that I will be altering my thoughts a lot over the next few years , as I start digging into the new soil of being an Independent Author . Well , I 'm up to Chapter 20 in the outlining process , and it 's going well so far . The genre of this novel is action / adventure / Thriller , and I 've always been a fan of those sort of novels , The co - author wants to keep each chapter to five or six pages , so I 'm working the narrative to suit the action . After I finish the outline , I 'll tell you more about the series , because by then , I hope to have more to tell you about . We both turned and looked behind us . Standing there was a tall statuesque redhead with green eyes and a sly smile on her ruby - red lips . She was dressed in a business suit with a knee - high skirt and low - heel shoes , but despite being conservatively dressed , she somehow make the outfit alluring . She smiled widen when I she looked at me , and I felt like a piece of meat dangling in front of a hungry lion . She moved toward us , her walk more like a stalk . " Who 's your friend ? " I cannot stress the beauty of this woman . It wasn 't the girl next door type of beauty , but the wild - weekend - in - Vegas - that - you - will - never - tell - your - mother - type of enchantress . I felt my heart beat faster and blood run to places that it shouldn 't in a the middle of a lawyer 's office . " Yes , yes , " Windicott said , his breaths fast and short . " Margaret , this is Roger Merlin , Lucian 's great - nephew . Roger is is one of my associates , Margaret Teague . " Her smile became wider . " Lucian 's kin , huh ? , " she said . She turned her head to look at Windicott . " Don 't you have to get ready for court ? " she asked , her silkily - smooth voice laced with steel . After he hurried back to his office and close his door , Margaret looked at me . " Well , " she breathed . " I never knew Lucian had such a handsome great nephew . " In the back of my head , alarms were going off . I 'm an all right looking guy , but AJ 's is not only better looking , he has the person skills I don 't . I felt my face getting flush and I looked around , . We were alone , and I felt my heart beating faster . When I looked back , I found myself staring into two large green eyes that promised so much . She was standing inches from me , having stepped close when I was distracted . " Are you doing anything tonight ? " she whispered . " We could have dinner . I know a lot about Lucian and could tell you everything . " She reached out to caress my arm , but as she did so , there was a burst of static electricity , shocking both of us . We jumped back , and the spell was broken . Margaret 's expression darkened and she glanced down at my hand . " The ring ! " she snapped . " When did you get the ring ? " Damien shot me an ugly look . I shot him an ugly look . While we were staring at each other , the door opened somewhere behind me and Cathy 's voice said , " Mister Brackett ? Mister Blount will see you now . " Damien waked toward me , and I braced myself for a shoulder bump . Instead , he walked past me without contact , walked past Margaret and into another office . Margaret gave me a half smile that was more cruel than sexy , then walked into another office . He nodded and gave me directions . We walked out and parted ways outside the office . I walked back to my car but just as I reached it , I felt eyes upon me . I did a full , slow spin , but saw no one looking at me . There were several dozen people in sight , all going about their own business . I looked around again , and this time , I spotted Mister Brawn sitting on a bench in the park , half - hidden behind a lamppost . He was throwing breadcrumbs on the ground in front of him , but there were no birds anywhere near him . He looked in my direction , saw me looking at him , got up and walked away . I watched him until he crossed the street on the other side of the park and enter the bakery . I waited a couple more minutes , but he didn 't reappear . I shrugged it off and was about to get into the car , when I changed my mind and started walking toward the florist . |
From June 2010 to July 2011 , I wrote at least one piece of flash fiction ( or very , very short fiction ) for 397 consecutive days . I wrote a couple a few days , so I ended up with 405 , all ranging anywhere between 7 to 397 words . ( Like I said , they were very short stories . ) I called the project Flash 397 . Below is one of the stories I was to originally include , but one I 'll probably end up cutting ; one of the many stories that dabbled in the oddities of time travel . Not that I don 't love it . It just doesn 't fit the tone of most of the others picked for the collection . We were a couple drinks in , at a bar waiting to watch my friend 's band play . She had been to London , Mexico , Dublin , Nicaragua . She tended to eschew the typical tourist locations , favoring a more authentic experience . " What about you ? Where have you been , " she asked . " Well , that 's my dirty secret , " I said . " I 've That old trailer was manufactured in 1959 . When my old man bought the lot it sat on in 1975 , it wasn 't his intention for his family of four to live in it . The family was to live in the house on the corner lot next do it . He bought the lot with the trailer because he could afford it , and he liked the idea of no one living immediately next to the Frymire clan , at the corner of 8th Street and Sycamore . The trailer would be used for storage . Dad didn 't do his due diligence , however , and the foundation of the house was rotted , and inhabitable . ( He also never took his wife by to look at the place before buying either lot . ) The family moved in the trailer , and the old house was eventually torn down . For the next 22 years , though , remnants of the house 's foundation remained . Rows of concrete about two feet high and a substantial number of bricks left from the house made for a veritable personal playground for my sisters and me , and my friends . We would play catch and tag and frisbee in the yard of that corner lot . As a grade schooler , I would imagine the fortress I would build on that lot once I had the means , a fortress that would have several floors , with an elevator large enough to carry my car - something of a mix between the Batmobile and Kitt from Knight Rider - up floor to floor . The inside looked somewhat like the batcave from the 1960s version of Batman in my mind . For a few years , between 1983 and when my sister , Susan , went off to college in 1987 , six of us lived in that trailer . You can imagine the shape it was in , being so old . Neither the " front " nor " back " door ( both were on the same side , of course ) locked properly , but we did the best we could with padlocks . It was never burglarized , but could have easily been . Whenever there was a thunderstorm , wind would sweep around the metal of the structure with a sound that terrified me . But the sound the rain made on the tin roof was beautiful . When the weather got really bad , and there was the threat of a tornado , sometimes Dad would have us go to Wal - Mart , sometimes to the concrete structure of the grain elevator where he worked . By the time Dad passed away in 2002 , the degradation of the structure was severe . Mom soon after moved into a house that Susan and her husband , Mark , bought for her . Susan took ownership of the lots and within a couple of years , the trailer was demolished , all remnants of the garage was removed ( which Dad and Mark had torn down in the 90s when the old man feared the next good snow would cave the roof in ) , all the of concrete from the corner lot was taken away , all the trees were cut down , and all their stumps were removed . Susan still owns the property to this day . My other brother - in - law , Matt , regularly mows it and keeps it maintained . As I approached the lot , I tried to determine where the sidewalk had been , the one that lead from the curb up to the concrete steps and the front door . With all the trees and stumps gone , with the driveway that divided the two lots overgrown and gone , it wasn 't easy . I made my best guess , and walked up the sidewalk that was no longer there . I stepped in the area where the trailer had been . Moving around in different memories , unstuck in time . I was vaguely aware of the front door of the house across the street opening . The red brick house directly across the street had been , and as far as I know , still a rental home , all my years growing up . A number of families came and went from there . It 's current resident , probably a guy my age , but one I hadn 't grown up going to school with , was watching me . It would have been very easy for me to turn to him and say , " Hey , my name 's Dennis . Yeah , this probably looks weird , huh ? I grew up in a trailer that used to be on this lot . My sister still owns the property ; she knows I 'm here . I 'm just taking a way down memory lane , as lame as that sounds . Sorry , I didn 't mean alarm anyone . " But on the other hand , now , fuck this guy . I grew up here . He was probably just another renter who had been there maybe a few months , and would probably be gone in a few more . What the fuck business is this of his ? And that 's the hand I went with . I wasn 't confrontational . I didn 't even look at him . I just held my arm out , pointed to the ground in front of me , and said in a way that indicated this was the only explanation I intended to give on the matter , " I lived here . " I was aware that I was adopting the stand - offish , stoic tone my old man often had . I was channeling him . As I 've aged , I 've been aware of adopting certain mannerisms and phrases of his , but I 've never felt more like I was becoming him than in that moment . " Okay , " he said . " If you don 't leave , I 'm going to call the police . " He wasn 't angry or confrontational himself , just a guy concerned about the strange person stalking around the empty lot in his neighborhood . I walked around a little more , still lost in my own world , but I knew the guy was right , I was in the wrong , and I should leave . Even if I did have permission from my family to be here , I was scaring at least one person in the neighborhood , and if the police came , the officer would probably tell me to get some damn common sense , do you know what time it is , I don 't care if you have permission , get the hell out of here . So I walked north , up through where the concrete and bricks that had been my childhood fortress , and I turned and headed down Sycamore . As I came to edge of the lot , I heard the guy come back out on the porch . " Hey , I just want to let you know , I called the police . " My back to him , I just held up a hand acknowledging that I heard him , and kept walking . About three blocks later , sure enough , a Carmi police car drove past , headed to answer the man 's call . I 've been shaving my head regularly since 2002 . I 've let it grow out for the occasional show , and it looks awkward as hell . It looks like this : For the most part , however , I 've been bald for eleven years . I shave two to three times a week . On one hand , it 's inconvenient because it adds about fifteen minutes to my morning routine . On the other hand , there 's something very therapeutic about it . The feel of the shaving gel on my scalp , the feel of the razor scraping against my skin , sweeping away the stubble and foam in neat rows . After getting some particularly bad news a few years ago , I found myself in the bathroom , showering so the steam could open my pores ( a necessity due to my sensitive skin ) , and standing in front of the mirror running a razor over my head before I was fully conscious of what I was doing . I buy the best brand named razors and shaving gel , because I don 't fuck around with my best asset , appearance - wise . A few months ago , I finally bought a tablet , an iPad mini . Now a part of my shaving routine is watching something on Netflix . I recently watched almost the entirety of the third season of " Louie " while shaving . There are various Ted Talk series on Netflix . This morning , I stumbled upon one from the " Life Hack " series of Ted Talks . This one is one the science of choosing to be happy instead of trying to let your work or career determine it instead of the other way around . I found it to be a great compliment to what I found myself reflecting upon yesterday . I recommend taking the time to watch it in its entirety . Mr . Achor is a funny and engaging speaker , and I found myself laughing out loud several times through this ( sometimes a less - than - smart thing while shaving . Posted by Last night , I was pondering out loud what to write today . Betsy suggested I write something light - hearted , pointing out my recent posts had been somewhat heavy . " When you write , you tend to spread your sad around , " she said . * * * * * I 've blogged off and on the last few years . I 've long ago recognized that while my Facebook updates tend to be light - hearted , and clever ( hopefully ) , and happy , my blog posts tend to be more contemplative , and yes , sad . The same goes for my live storytelling as well . Some of my tales are light , happy fare , but most gravitate towards the darker parts of my life . * * * * * I spend a substantial time scanning my news feed on Facebook most days . There are plenty of happy posts and pictures to go around , but if I had to put a name to the overall trend I sense , it would be " Making the best of a bad situation . " Even in the clever and witty updates , there 's an underlying sense of dread , anger and sadness . There are posts about the national and world scene , about injustices carried out by the better off , murders at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect us , flailing legislation from old white men threatened by the inevitable equality of women and minorities . On the more intimate level , there are passive - aggressive missives against the bit players in our lives ; the guy on the train who wouldn 't surrender his seat to the eight - month pregnant woman , or the BMW that almost mowed us down in the intersection . Posts about the bosses and co - workers who use their stations to belittle us and make us feel less than . And , of course , posts suggesting hurt brought on by the ones closest to us . Posts about lost and unrequited love . All the while we post profile pictures of us looking our best , cover photos of the exciting places we 've been or the incredible things we 're doing , and Instagram photos of the delicious food we 're eating . * * * * * Late in the movie Cool Hand Luke , Luke ( Paul Newman ) escapes from prison . Months later , he sends his buddy on the chain gang a photograph of him on the outside . He 's wearing Dennis Frymire This I believe : We need 4 hugs a day for survival . We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance . We need 12 hugs a day for growth . - Virginia Satir He came to speak to my junior year journalism class once , and he told us the toughest part of his job was having the unfortunate duty of going to someone 's home to inform them of the unexpected death of a loved one . One of the students asked him , what can you possibly say to someone in a situation like that to comfort them . His response was " in times when all words fail , I 'm a huge believer in the power of touch . " I 'm paraphrasing , of course . It 's been over 18 years . But that sentiment has stuck with me since . When my wife and I separated in 2006 , she left Chicago just two months after we arrived . The only people I knew in the city were through improv , who were great to joke and drink with , but not much for emotional support and all that . After only a couple of weeks of being alone , night after night in a one - bedroom apartment that now only had a futon and a couch , the muscles of my body physically ached . When I slept at night , I clutched a pillow tight to relieve the soreness . This was reflex ; I didn 't really think about what I was doing , but I knew why it was happening . The first woman I held after my separation was a one - night stand set up by a mutual friend . The friend knows me well , fortunately , knows that one - nights aren 't really my thing , and knew sex was was a distant second to my simple need for touch , and communicated that to my date . At one point during our encounter , I squeezed her so tight , she stopped and said , " It 's been a while since you 've been held , hasn 't it ? " I 've always been particular about how I am touched . I like solid , firm touch . In some situations , I enjoy light , feathery touch , but not often . A point of contention in one of my past relationships is no matter how often I explained this , she would give me light touches repeatedly , as if she did it enough , I would eventually like it . Betsy 's and my bed time routine : She lies with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her until she senses I 'm nodding off , because I always nod off first . She 'll then kiss me good night and roll over to her side of the bed , most nights listening to a podcast on her iPod . ( Stuff You Should Know , with hosts Josh and Chuck , is her favorite . " Go listen to your mens , " I 'll say . And yes , I say ' mens ' with an 's ' , but I 'm not sure why . ) I work in a profession that is complicated because people often have a difficult time delineating between caring touch , therapeutic touch and sexual touch . This is particularly the case in America , where massage establishments are often a front for prostitution . This often results in even otherwise intelligent people feeling they have license to degrade me and my profession . Even employers I 've had . Even friends of mine . I used to call friends out on this , but I don 't anymore . Partly because it 's a headache , partly because it occurred to me some time ago that those most egregious in this regard have non - existent or unsatisfactory sex lives , and their words are merely a display and a by - product of this . When I taught at a massage school , I had a Hungarian student that was baffled by this aspect of American culture . In my country , there is no such nonsense , she said . * * * * * * Being a male therapist , my appointment book is almost always the last to be filled compared to my female colleagues . I have to be hyper - aware how my touch is conveyed when I work with female clients . It 's known at one clinic where I work that if a female client makes an accusation of inappropriate touch against a male therapist , the clinic will likely have to take the side of the client , for liability reasons . * * * * * It just recently occurred to me that the last time I felt my healthiest was four years ago , when I was in massage school , and getting massages regularly . As much as I preach the need for massage , I am not good at taking care of myself . This is common among therapists , and I 'm resolving to change that in myself . * * * * * * It is my belief the world would be infinitely more peaceful if everyone gave and received a daily back rub , if even just for five minutes . * * * * * Touch has a memory . - John Keats I was sitting at my desk in customer service when Nancy called my cell . She had been calling with regular updates on Mom . I stepped into a storage room a few feet away and took the call . Earlier that morning , Mom had another stroke , this one massive , and she wasn 't going to wake up again . It was just a matter of time before " the body catches up with the soul " , as she said one doctor put it . Everybody should get there as soon as possible to say goodbye . My first call on the Brown Line train to Lakeview was not to an airline or to Amtrak . It was to the director of the show I was in . It was a Friday . I had a show that night . I told the director the situation . I needed to leave town right away to go be with my family . He asked me to give him a few minutes while he made a call to the artistic director of the company . He called back just a few minutes later . Unfortunately , he said , they had to ask me to stay that night and do the performance , and they could find a replacement for me for Saturday . My mom passed , we put her in the ground , I came back to Chicago , and the show went on . At the conclusion of the run , I was the only non - company member to help with strike . A few months later , they asked me to join the company , which I did . * * * * * The situation with my mom 's passing wound up being moot , in a way : She held on for several days longer than the doctors thought , and my sisters and I were sleeping at her bedside when she passed . But years later , it 's hard to wrap my head around how I handled the situation . If , God forbid , something tragic happened now while I was in a show , there would be no discussion with anyone about whether or not I could leave town , I would just leave . My sense of what theater professionalism means , at least in regards to non - paying storefront , has changed . Yes , of course , treat the work and your colleagues with respect and dignity . But real life comes first . I am no longer with that company . For the last few shows I was with them , I did not show up for strike because they were always on Sunday , which I worked , and I couldn 't justify sacrificing a day 's pay for such , particularly at a time when money was tight . There were other factors in why the company and I needed to part ways , but I sensed this was a point of resentment towards me from some . * * * * * A show I was in closed yesterday . Set strike followed immediately after , and the entire cast and crew chipped in to help . I stayed for about a half hour , and then I took my leave . My reason was simply no more than this : Betsy had been out of town all weekend , I work seven days a week , and our time spent together is usually a stolen hour or two at the end of the day . So I wanted to get home before she did and have dinner waiting for her . I loved this show I just finished . The group of people I worked with were amazing to play with , and I felt a twinge of guilt as I left them still working . * * * * * One of the things I love about Betsy is that she is not involved at all in the theater scene . A couple of her best friends , as well as me , are heaviI know this tends to be the natural progression , the way things go . Maybe it has a lot to do with working on one show or another since last March , while also working seven days a week much of that time . And most of the performances of these shows were for audiences of ten or fifteen people at a time . The reality of the Chicago storefront theater scene is that it 's not only a question of how much talent you have , but how much time and willingness do you have to give that talent away for practically free . Right now , I 'm not sure how much more of that I have . Posted by He was disheveled , dirty clothes , maybe late - 30s to early - 40 . Everyone else on the train had given the man distance . He appeared to be sleeping at first glance , but shortly after the train pulled out of the station , he stood up , steps unsteady , and tried to engage with others on the train , who either ignored him , or moved away . As the train pulled out of Belmont , the next stop , he got a little more aggressive in trying to get attention . He put his fist in the face of a young 20 - something in corporate clothes who was trying to escape the situation with earbuds in , eyes buried in his smartphone . The man wasn 't trying to be threatening with his fist ; it looked like he just wanted a fist bump . He wanted acknowledgment . The 20 - something pulled away as far as he could in his seat . " No ! Don 't touch me . Get away . " The man moved away . Something similar played out with two or three other passengers . He was getting even more aggressive . I started to look for the Call Operator button . I made eye contact with a guy at the other end of the car , and he indicated that the button was on his end , and he had already pushed it . The man had now backed up into one end of the car . A couple of women and another guy sat in their seats , keeping their faces in their phones or books , trying to ignore him . I decided to engage him to get his attention . I wasn 't going to confront him , just try to chat . I had in mind something a friend had done in a similar situation , a couple of years ago . He diffused what could have been a volatile situation by nonchalantly asking the disruptive person for the time . I noticed what looked like a standard white iPhone earbud cord running from the man 's front jean pocket , up and tucked into his tee shirt . As I approached , I indicated the cord and said , " Hey , what are you listening to ? " He looked at me , wild - eyed . " Huh ? " or something like that . I pointed towards the cord again . " Your music . What are you listening to ? " I don 't know if he understood me , but he seemed overwhelmed , not sure what to do now that he had someone 's undivided , interested attention . Tears welled up in his eyes . He plopped down in the nearest empty seat . He began crying , and talking unintelligibly through his tears . I sat in the adjacent seat . " Yeah , man , I know it , " I said even though I couldn 't make out a word . We were pulling into Addison now , and the man who had pushed the button on the other end of the car was now waiting to flag down security once the doors opened . " We 're going to get you some help , " I said to the man , but I don 't think he understood . The doors opened and security came . The officer was friendly and got the man off the train and onto the platform with no struggle . As the officer tried to talk to the man on the platform , tried to figure out his situation , the man who pushed the Operator button kept interjecting . " He was threatening people . Getting right up in their faces . " He repeated it a couple of times over the next couple of minutes . I didn 't say anything , but I wanted to say , " Okay , jackass , we get it . He was being threatening . But he 's obviously not in his right mind , and he wasn 't intentionally trying to hurt or intimidate anyone . And you 're a big guy , just like me . I doubt you ever actually felt threatened . Back off . " ( Okay , maybe my actually thoughts in the moment were no more than , " Okay , we get it , asshole . Shut up . " But you get the idea . ) The doors closed , and the train made it 's way out of the station . One woman on that end of the car looked up from her book . " You handled that really well . Impressive . " I thanked her , but I think some of my annoyance at her came through . I was annoyed because - and I admit I could be wrong - she seemed to lack any sympathy for the man just escorted off the train . " Thanks for calming down the rabid dog , " she seemed to be saying . I know that may be an unfair judgement , and I know women have to put up a harder exterior in situations like this , but that was my perception in the moment . I pulled out my phone and gave my attention to the screen . I didn 't want to carry on a conversation about it . Back in August , Antoinette Tuff , a front office worker in a school near Atlanta , Georgia stopped a school shooting when she engaged the gunman in conversation . She told him stories of her own struggles , and encouraged him that he could overcome his own . She was the go - between for the entire conversation between the gunman and the cops outside the school . She prevented what could have been yet another mass shooting in a school by seeing the man with the gun as a human being who needed help instead of a monster , as terrifying as the situation was . When we live in a city , we get used to seeing unstable individuals on an almost daily basis . If we see them coming on the street , we try and avoid them . If they approach us , we deny eye contact , and walk by . If we 're stuck with them on a train car , or a bus , more times than not , we busy ourselves and avert our eyes as to not be engaged . Whenever an unstable person who has created a scene leaves the train or bus , whether escorted off or by their own accord , there 's always that moment when passengers finally look up and look around , and make eye contact with the other passengers . Relief . Maybe an eye roll . A small , shared laugh . But sometimes I wonder if we 're misplacing where the threat actually is . Maybe it 's not our physical safety that feel 's threatened . I could be wrong , but maybe sometimes we feel threatened because the unstable person is a reminder that most of us are just a few bad breaks in life away from being the same as them . One of my favorite plays in college was The Boys Next Door , by Tom Griffin , about four men with mental disabilities that live in a group home . In one scene late in the play , Lucian , the character with the most profound disabilities , has to speak in front of a state panel to prove his mental state . As Lucien stands to speak , he gets nervous , he starts muttering , retreats into himself . And then the lights shift , and all evidence of his mental disability begins to slip away , and Lucien gives a frank , eloquent , and heart - breaking description of what it is like to live trapped inside his mind . The last words of the monologue have stuck with me over 15 years . " I am here to remind the species of the species . I am Lucien Percival Smith . And without me , without my shattered crippled brain , you will never again be frightened by what you might have become . Or indeed , by that your future might make you . " A few weeks ago , I had a dream I had a one - night stand with a guy . More accurately , I dreamed I had had a one - night stand with a guy . In the dream , I just wrote about it . I blogged it . I posted it online for all to see . When I woke up , it didn 't bug me a bit that I had a dream where I had slept with a guy . I 've had those dreams on occasion before . What bugged me was how worried I was what some people would think about it . I come from a very conservative part of southern Illinois , and a very conservative family . Last year , two of my sisters and I had a couple of heated online conversations about gay rights . One childhood friend messaged me to tell me that in recent years , his mom had become lesbian and had a long - term partner , but still , he believed homosexuality was a sin , as if having a gay family member somehow gave him a little more insight on the matter and the right to judge it . At about the same time , one of my childhood Sunday school teachers un - friended me after I posted something pro - gay rights . It 's with less frequency these days , but I do see the " I believe in traditional marriage " - type posts in my Facebook newsfeed , mostly from those in my hometown area . The take away from my dream a few weeks ago , the fear I felt in that dream , was this : If I had turned out gay , I 'm not sure when I eventually would have gotten the courage to come out to my family , and to the people I grew up around . I 'm very bold in my beliefs as a straight ally , but perhaps I wouldn 't have been as brave if I had to deal with the personal rejection of not just my beliefs , but me as a person . All that is to say , I am now in even more awe of my gay friends who live their lives openly and proudly . Cheers and congrats on the right to marry . It 's about time . Posted by I cop to the style of this entry somewhat aping Kurt Vonnegut , in particular , Slaughterhouse - Five , which I 've been re - reading sections of lately . About a year and a half ago , I was back in my hometown Wal - Mart . I was in the book section looking for a particular book , which I was able to find the paperback version of but not the hardback , which was disappointing because I always prefer the hardback version . I decided to buy the paperback version anyway because I wanted to start reading this book , like , yesterday . The 50 Shades of Grey novels are about a recent college graduate who is sexually awakened thanks to her BDSM - loving boss . BDSM stands for bondage / discipline , dominance / submission , and sadism / masochism . I haven 't read a single passage from the book , but I hear the prose is horrible , and for those involved in actual BDSM , it 's depiction of certain acts are mild and tame . I asked Susan if she had heard of the series , and her knowing look said she had and she knew what they were about . Then James announced that one of his classmates at school was reading " that book " . He was pointing to the first in the trilogy . Susan and I looked at each other . We asked if he was sure , and he said yes . We made some comments about how inappropriate it was for a someone so young to be reading such a book . It wasn 't inappropriate because the writing was bad . It was inappropriate because of sex . Then I showed Susan the book I was buying , which is also the first in a trilogy . She had read it , the entire trilogy , and had seen the movie based on the first book , and had tried to get James to read the book , but he wasn 't so into it . I know I 'm not making any new or original observations here , but what 's been on my mind a lot the last few days is our culture 's weird relationship with depictions of violence and sex . We gladly accept several forms of the former in our storytelling - movies , TV , books . Sex , not so much . We 're squeamish about it . Depictions of sex lead to awkward conversations parents don 't want to have with their kids . Violence is a lot easier to understand and explain away , for some reason . A couple of years ago , I bought my then 14 - year - old niece a illustrated book with various bon mots of humorous wisdom for teenagers . I only flipped through the first view pages , honestly , but it seemed sensible , and that she would enjoy it . A couple of hours after I gave it to her , her mom picked up and began flipping through it , and then threw the book in my lap , admonishing me that the book was inappropriate for Sarah , and I should be more careful selecting the things I buy for her kids . Turns out later in the book , there are a couple of sexually - suggestive items . I read them . They were fairly mild , but I agreed they seemed out of place and inappropriate for such a book . At a loss of what else to do with it , I threw it in the trash . Sarah 's favorite TV show , by the way , is M * A * S * H . M * A * S * H was a 1970s - 80s television situational comedy about a mobile hospital unit facing the daily horrors of the Korean War . It 's an odd TV show for a present - day teenager to identify as her favorite , but she grew up watching it with her mom and dad , who own the entire series on DVD . * * * * * * He has dropped out since , but a few months ago , Charles Hunnam was announced to play Mr . Grey in the upcoming movie based on 50 Shades of Grey . This displeased me because the thought of Hunnam as BDSM - loving douchebag , Christian Grey was at odds with my image of him as murderous motorcycle gang member , Jax Teller , on one of my favorite TV programs , Sons of Anarchy . Sons of Anarchy is a show that surprises me most when at least one person is not killed in any given episode . * * * * * * There have been some fantastic , innovative movies in 2013 . The only one I have bought advance tickets for ? The Hunger Games : Catching Fire . Posted by A communication principle I learned years ago in a college class , one that I can 't locate the name of now , at least in a five minute Google search , goes something like this : If you like a person - and I don 't mean ' like ' as have a romantic interest in , but simply like someone - you default to expecting that person to like you back . And vice versa : If you dislike someone , you tend to assume that person doesn 't like you either . When you like someone , and you realize the sentiment is not reciprocated , this creates distress . The same when someone likes you and you dislike him ; it 's difficult to wrap your mind around . I know that sounds like simple common sense , but there 's actually a name for that . Recently , I 've had a couple of instances where I realized people who I held in high regard did not think the same of me in return , when I thought they had . In both cases , I found myself embarrassed . In one case , I still had to be around the individual for a period of time , and I wasn 't sure how to conduct myself around the person . I had been friendly and chatty before ; I ended up avoiding interaction with the person unless it was necessary . When I was in middle school , and a little into high school , I had a crush on a girl in my class who I won 't name because honestly we 're Facebook friends , and I don 't think she reads my updates often , but some of her other friends might , and I don 't want to make it awkward . Anyway , this girl was probably my first great adolescent crush ( my first crush ever being on the young , pretty bank teller that always gave me a sucker and a balloon with the bank logo on it every time Mom and I went to deposit dad 's paychecks when I was a toddler . ) My first real heartbreak was in the 7th grade when I watched another guy in my class dancing with her , and then a while later , I overheard the news that she had agreed to " go out " with him . ( I used to be Facebook friends with this guy , too , but he deleted me sometime back , probably because I 'm a liberal , Obama - supporting , gay - loving kind of guy , and , well , one of the last posts I remember reading from him was an emphatic declaration that toleration for all the funny - looking brown - skinned people must cease . ) A couple of years later , she ended up dating one of my best friends . He dragged me with them to the movies one night - Speed , starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock . I had already taken my seat when they came into the theater , and my friend guided her down the aisle towards me , and she turned to him and said , with no attempt to hide the disgust in her voice , " I 'm not sitting next to him . " ( I was probably the biggest dork in my class , or at least way up there in the running . If I was a girl , I wouldn 't have sat next me either . ) Here 's the thing about the couple of people who I recently realize didn 't care much for me : I had not fully learned the lesson from so many years ago in high school . I don 't really know either one of these people all that well . I based my opinion of them on a few interactions . Which is not to say they are not good people - as much as learning to the contrary may sting , liking me is not a criterion for whether I consider you a good person - but it is to say , I don 't really know them at all , so why should I worry what they think of me ? * A final note about that crush from middle school . She 's a very lovely person with a beautiful family , still living in my hometown area . The last time I saw her was at the fall festival some years back . We chatted for a while , and she was even kind enough to stick around and watch me compete in the singing competition . Posted by I surpassed 100 cycled miles in a little over a week , earlier today . Nine days ago , I began using the website and app , Map My Ride . Since , I 've spent , on average , almost an hour a day riding a bicycle . In the last five weeks , I 've probably biked between 400 - 450 miles . Oh , I would never ride a bike in this city . I mean , I 'd love to be able to take a bike and go up and down the lake shore bike path , but ride in traffic ? Never . It 's too dangerous . I borrowed a friend 's bike a couple of times my first year in the city , and it 's not for me . I 'd get myself killed in a week . Besides , everybody I know who owns a bike in the city has had at least one stolen . The first time I had my bike stolen , I 'd be so pissed , I 'd never buy another one . For the non - Chicagoan ( or the non - south or west side Chicagoan who hasn 't stepped outside in a few months ) , Divvy is Chicago 's relatively new public - share bike program . In the last three months or so , more and more bike stations have been springing up around the city . In the last month , it seems , every time I 'm out and about , I see at least one more spring up . The way it works is this : You check a bike out of a station , where fifteen or so are magnetically - locked . Whether you have a 24 - hour pass , or an annual membership , you have a 30 - minute window with your bike before extra fees are incurred . You can ride , then return your bike to any station with an open dock . ( And if you know your ride is going to be longer than a half - hour , you can stop at a station somewhere along your route , briefly dock it , then check it out again . This helps avoid late fees . ) The idea of riding in traffic still terrified me , but the possibility of having access to a bike without having to worry about it getting stolen piqued my interest . So upon leaving work one afternoon , I bought a 24 - hour pass , and rode home , taking the lake shore bike path for most of the trip . The ride along city streets did intimidate me a little , but not near as much as the two rides I took on my friends back in 2006 . The next day , I ended up leaving work about an hour early , and I realized I was still in my 24 - hour window . So I rode home again . Less scarier still . And it felt great . After a couple of more rides over the next couple of days , it hit me that after seven years in the city , and having used public transportation for most of them , I was just tired of taking the train or bus everywhere . This was in that stretch of August where we actually had a few near - 100 degree weather days . Even with the heat , I realized that the idea of leaving work and going to stand on a train platform in the sun was more tiring than jumping on a bike and riding home . Very shortly after , I bought an annual membership - $ 75 . For an entire year . Unlimited 30 - minute rides . While I waited for my member key to arrive in the mail , I went out and bought a helmet . ( Pulling the helmet from its box , it really occurred to me for the first time that a helmet is something you buy but hope you never have to use it to its full capacity . ) In the last five weeks , I 've rode a Divvy bike instead of taking the CTA whenever possible . I 'm as safe as I can be when navigating traffic , and I 've gotten braver and more confident . I rode a bike home in the rain the other day , the downpour getting so bad at one point , I was soaked to the bone , coming this close to killing my iPhone . I 'm currently the Foursquare Mayor of three Divvy Stations . I 'm hooked . Here 's why that 's silly . When I was kid , I rode my bicycle everywhere . When my parents started letting me go out and ride on my own , and not just on our own street in front of the house , I would go off on hour , two - hour long bike rides around my small Southern Illinois town . One day , I was out riding on the highway , in the pouring rain , and a semi - truck drove by , and only after it passed did I realize that the passenger - side mirror had come mere inches from my head . And it didn 't really faze me . I just thought , " Huh . That was close " and kept doing my thing . Either stupidity or bravery , somewhere along the way , I lost it , at least in regards to biking . And for years , I told myself I could never be a city biker , only to have that be proven very wrong in the matter of a couple of weeks . The more I think about it , the more I regret having held myself back from this experience these last seven years . I moved to Chicago seven years ago , in May of 2006 . I got a job in River North , a few blocks off of the Chicago Brown Line stop , wiithin a couple of months of being here . Shortly before the train platform , going southbound , there 's this one rooftop , and one morning soon after I began my River North job , I noticed a discarded , empty whiskey bottle in the middle of it . ( There 's no label . It could have been any alcohol , really , but I decided early on it was whiskey . ) Over the years , I 've checked on that bottle if I think of it and if I 'm near a window I can look out . Seven years later , that bottle is still there . It 's been my one constant in all my time in Chicago . ( Recently , it 's been joined by a discarded paint roller . ) It remains a reminder of how much I 've changed since I 've been here , but also how much I have stayed the same . I left that job in River North almost four years ago , escorted out of the building with a box of my personal effects , a lay off long over due in the wake of a crashed economy . This afternoon , I return to work in the same neighborhood , just a few blocks away from my old office , in a new position with a chiropractic office . The train delayed briefly as it pulled into the station today , and I finally thought to snap a picture of my seven - year companion . With this in mind , here 's seven things I 've learned in my seven years in Chicago , in no particular order . 1 . I have little desire to be famous anymore . I simply wish to do a good job and be respected in my work and artistic endeavors . 2 . Unless I have a private , covered place to park it , I will never again own a car in this city . 3 . It 's sad to think of all the time I spent before 2009 not drinking coffee . 4 . No matter how many people I meet and get to know in this big city , I will always be a little bit surprised when I randomly run into someone I know in public . 5 . The art of personal storytelling can save you , but it can also hinder you . When the paint of your medium is your own personal past and narrative , you have to be careful with the waDennis Frymire I left my job in downtown Chicago last week for a job in Lincoln Park . I went from alighting the Brown Line train at Adams & Wabash - one of the last stops in the Loop , after almost everyone working downtown has left the train - to alighting at Diversey . I now exit the train going against a stream of commuters headed downtown , past workers headed the other way - them in business attire , me in my black athletic pants and polo . They are going to the office . I am going to the massage clinic . I left a job where I was easily making the most money I had ever made in my life ( but still a very modest income by most standards ) , teaching at a massage school . I now work a job where the money is good when the work is there , but the work is inconsistent , especially during daytime hours . I work the daytime hours to accommodate my art at night , art that is rewarding in many ways , one of which is not financial . I could give you a laundry list of reasons I left my decent - paying job , but it boils down to this : I woke almost every day dreading going to work . Many days started at four or five a . m . because that 's when I woke up , already stressed about the day , unable to fall back asleep . " Dude . You were teaching at a massage school . How stressful could it be ? " It was . And it was simply my time to go . Let 's leave it at that . I gave my notice at an awkward time , in a meeting the president of the school had called to offer me a full - time position . ( I was contracted from month - to - month . ) Do I question my decision ? Every day , especially the ones when business is very slow , when I spend most of my day sitting at the Dunkin Donuts next to the clinic , sipping my coffee , reading , or jotting notes in my iPad . This week , I have made in three days what it took me one day to make at the school . I do miss the students - from the ones you only have to chat with or watch them work for five minutes to know they are going to be great in this field , ( probably better than me ) , to the ones that aren 't even really sure why they enrolled , but are still fun noDennis Frymire |
" There 'll be two dates on your tombstone , and all your friends will read ' em . But all that 's gonna matter is … that little dash between ' em . " A few years ago , I stood at my father 's grave for the first time . There , engraved in stone was : " G . VIRGIL VAIL - July 25 , 1891 ( dash ) December 6 , 1942 " , the dates of my father 's birth and death . According to those dates , my father was 51 years old when he died . That short dash represents 51 years of my father 's life . Everyone reading this already has the date of their birth . We are all now working on the " dash " . Think about some of the greatest blessings you currently have in your life . Your home Your peace of mind Your health Sharing a porch swing on a summer evening with your grandma Sitting at the Thanksgiving table or near a Christmas tree Tears in your eyes during the playing of " The Star - Spangled Banner " You have hands , feet , eyes and ears . You know how to read and write . You live in America . You are relatively sane . Exactly how are you measuring your life ? How is your " dash " doing ? Only picture I have of him ( and my brother ) The older I get , the more I enjoy Saturday mornings . A few weeks ago , I was shuffling toward the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other . What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time . Let me tell you about it . I turned the volume up on my radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning talk show . I heard an older sounding chap with a golden voice . You know the kind , he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business himself . He was talking about " a thousand marbles " to someone named " Tom . " I was intrigued and sat down to listen to what he had to say . " Well , Tom , it sure sounds like you 're busy with your job . I 'm sure they pay you well but it 's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much . Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet . Too bad you missed your daughter 's dance recital . Let me tell you something Tom , something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities . " That 's when he began to explain his theory of " a thousand marbles " " You see , I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic . The average person lives about seventy - five years . I know , some live more and some live less , but on average , folks live about seventy - five years . I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime . Now stick with me Tom , I 'm getting to the important part . " " It took me until I was fifty - five years old to think about all this in any detail , " he went on , " and by that time I had lived through over twenty - eight hundred Saturdays . I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy - five , I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy . " " So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had . I ended up having to visit three toy stores to roundup 1000 marbles . I took them home and put them inside of a large , clear plastic container right here in my workshop next to the radio . Every Saturday since then , I have taken one marble out and have thrown it away " " I found that by watching the marbles diminish , I focused more on the really important things in life . There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight . Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign - off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast . This morning , I took the very last marble out of the container . I figure if I make it until next Saturday then God has blessed me with a little extra time to be with my loved ones . . . . . . " It was nice to talk to you Tom , I hope you spend more time with your loved ones , and I hope to meet you again someday . Have a good morning ! " You could have heard a pin drop when he finished . Even the show 's moderator didn 't have anything to sI had planned to do some work that morning , then go to the gym . Instead , I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss . " C ' mon honey , I 'm taking you and the kids to breakfast . " " What brought this on ? " she asked with a smile . " Oh , nothing special , " I said . " It has just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids . Hey , can we stop at a toy store while we 're out ? Taking down Christmas decorations , I placed them in the living room … making a central spot for packing later . But I couldn 't reach the wreath above the fireplace . My husband , John , would have to help me there . The picture of Venice that belonged there was in the storage room , so I brought it out and propped it against the wall for hanging . As I hurried to do something else , I saw I had placed the picture against the wall upside down . Fleetingly , I wondered if John would notice . More chores … more taking down decorations … and then I spied the wreath among the decorations . I glanced above the fireplace … and sure enough , John had helped me . There was Venice … upside down . He , too , had hurriedly hung it in place and moved on to something else . As I stood and looked at the picture … which now looked like an abstract painting … I thought about life . Sometimes we see things from a totally different perspective than is intended . If we hadn 't been in such a hurry , we would have noticed the small detail that the picture was upside down . But other issues seemed more important . Is there a life picture you may be looking at that is upside down in your mind ? What happens if you rotate it ? Does the true picture come into focus ? Who is in charge of how that picture is hanging ? Can you change it ? Or do you like abstract art ? Read more . . . A well - known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $ 20 bill . In the room of 200 , he asked , " Who would like this $ 20 bill ? " Hands started going up . He said , " I am going to give this $ 20 to one of you , but first , let me do this . He proceeded to crumple up the $ 20 dollar bill . He then asked , " Who still wants it ? " Still the hands were up in the air . Well , he replied , " What if I do this ? " He dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe . He picked it up , now crumpled and dirty . " Now , who still wants it ? " Still the hands went into the air . " My friends , we have all learned a very valuable lesson . No matter what I did to the money , you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value . It was still worth $ 20 . Many times in our lives , we are dropped , crumpled , and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way . We feel as though we are worthless . But no matter what has happened or what will happen , you will never lose your value . Dirty or clean , crumpled or finely creased , you are still priceless to God . The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know , but by : Each December , I vowed to make Christmas a calm and peaceful experience . I had cut back on nonessential obligations - - extensive card writing , endless baking , decorating , and even overspending . Yet still , I found myself exhausted , unable to appreciate the precious family moments , and of course , the true meaning of Christmas . My son , Nicholas , was in kindergarten that year . It was an exciting season for a six - year - old . For weeks , he 'd been memorizing songs for his school 's " Winter Pageant . " I didn 't have the heart to tell him I 'd be working the night of the production . Unwilling to miss his shining moment , I spoke with his teacher . She assured me there 'd be a dress rehearsal the morning of the presentation . All parents unable to attend that evening were welcome to come then . Fortunately , Nicholas seemed happy with the compromise . So , the morning of the dress rehearsal , I filed in ten minutes early , found a spot on the cafeteria floor and sat down . Around the room , I saw several other parents quietly scampering to their seats . As I waited , the students were led into the room . Each class , accompanied by their teacher , sat cross - legged on the floor . Then , each group , one by one , rose to perform their song . Because the public school system had long stopped referring to the holiday as Christmas , " I didn 't expect anything other than fun , commercial entertainment - songs of reindeer , Santa Claus , snowflakes and good cheer . So , when my son 's class rose to sing , " Christmas Love , " I was slightly taken aback by its bold title . Nicholas was aglow , as were all of his classmates , adorned in fuzzy mittens , red sweaters , and bright snowcaps upon their heads . Those in the front row - center stage - - held up large letters , one by one , to spell out the title of the song . As the class would sing " C is for Christmas , " a child would hold up the letter C . Then , " H is for Happy , " and on and on , until each child holding up his portion had presented the complete message , " Christmas Love . " The performance was going smoothly , until suddenly , we noticed her ; a small , quiet , girl in the front row holding the letter " M " upside down - totally unaware her letter " M " appeared as a " W . " The audience of 1st through 6th graders snickered at this little one 's mistake . But she had no idea they were laughing at her , so she stood tall , proudly holding her " W . " Although many teachers tried to shush the children , the laughter continued until the last letter was raised , and we all saw it together . A hush came over the audience and eyes began to widen . In that instant , we understood the reason we were there , why we celebrated the holiday in the first place , why even in the chaos , there was a purpose for our festivities . For when the last letter was held high , the message read loud and clear : Our daughter had a foreign exchange student live with her 11 years ago . This is Saskia and she has just graduated from medical school in Germany . My daughter is with her for Christmas . . . and it 's snowing . I rarely remember dreaming . Maybe every six months I can actually tell about one the next morning . So when I have a vivid dream … it is special … and in color . I have an iPhone and keep in contact with my daughters mostly by text . For those of you who don 't have the kind of phone that texts , a box comes up on the screen with the words being sent inside . Above the box is the time of the text . My daughter , Lorri , was trying to get to Germany . Her first flight was canceled … due to weather in Europe . She left Portland early Saturday morning our time and was to arrive in Germany Sunday morning their time … being routed through several cities . There is nine hours difference between here and Germany . That is important information . Early Sunday morning , I had a vivid dream … receiving a text . I saw the phone screen clearly . The words said , " Lorri has arrived in Germany . " But I didn 't wake up . I had another vivid dream . Another text . " Lorri has arrived in Germany . " The first text was still on the screen . It was sent at 12 : 40 am my time . The second one sent at 2 : 12 am . This time I woke up . Lorri was there . I had peace … and went back to sleep . At 4 : 30 am I received a text … a real one … on my real phone . It said , " Made it to Germany . " I gave up on sleeping and got up . Lorri and I had agreed to communicate by Facebook ( since she needed to turn her phone off ) . So I sent her a message and asked what time she landed . 9 : 40 am Germany time . Who knew God could text ? Read more . . . This time of year , life gets crazy . Back to back Christmas parties … decorating … Christmas cards . Add to that , a daughter trying to get to Germany to attend her previous foreign exchange student 's graduation from medical school … and the flight is canceled due to weather . She can 't make it in time . Stress . One of the parties we attended yesterday involved driving up a mountain to Tollgate , Oregon . Left town on packed snow … cars sliding … one with its left tires hanging on the divider leaving the car dangling on its side . Some freezing rain . Then some really thick fog . Stress . Then I had a life moment . Friends at the party had arrived from their cabin in their Sno Cat . Ever taken a ride in one of those ? It 's not a smooth one . I felt like a bobble - head as we traveled through the snow to their cabin . Next time you need some stress relief , take a ride in a Sno Cat . Laughter is the best medicine . Read more . . . * * * * * * * * * * Ladies , don 't forget the rummage sale . It 's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house . Don 't forget your husbands . * * * * * * * * * * Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community . Smile at someone who is hard to love . Say " Hell " to someone who doesn 't care much about you . * * * * * * * * * * Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions . She is also having trouble sleeping . She has requested tapes of Pastor Jack 's sermons . When my husband , and pastor , walked out of my life , a vortex of pain threatened to suck me away . He left me with three children , no skills , and no income . Sleepless nights , fearful days , and a wooden ceiling almost brought me to the brink of a breakdown . One night at bedtime , I envisioned a basket on my nightstand . As I climbed into bed , I placed all my worries into the imaginary container . Within myself , I began to have a conversation with God : " Lord , You know I don 't understand how I am going to make it through tomorrow , and the next day , and the next . I 'm terrified . But I believe that You love me , and want the best for me . I can 't do anything about my anxieties tonight , so I 'm giving them to You . " Almost instantly , my thoughts began to fly . " How will I pay the bills ? I need a job ! The groceries are running out ! " But each night , I handed my anxiety over to God . He was there - alone with me - removing my basket filled with worry and pain . In that rough , restless place , I discovered that God is in each and every moment , if we look for Him . But looking for Him requires that we take control of our mind . My focus had to shift from the concerns of my life to seeing and trusting God . I now see His love and grace through the eyes of my children , a glass of quenching water , a beautiful sunset , and every precious moment . I have found my daily quiet time by turning off the noise of the world . I go inward , into a silent place , where it 's just me and God . In that quiet place , I place my worries into a basket and hand them to Him . In that private and tranquil place , He tells me not to worry . His reassuring voice encourages me to " cast my anxiety upon Him because He cares for me " ( 1 Peter 5 : 7 ) . I have learned that it is up to me to take advantage of every moment . Instead of tapping my fingers impatiently at a red light , I can take that moment to connect with God . When I 'm standing in the line at the cash register , instead of wondering why the person in front is taking so long , I can feel God 's presence right there beside me . " RETARDED " GRANDPARENTS Written by a third grader , on what his grandparents do . After Christmas , a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school . One child wrote the following : We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa . They used to live in a big brick house , but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Arizona . Now they live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass . They ride around on their bicycles , and wear name tags , because they don 't know who they are anymore . They go to a building called a wreck center , but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now , they do exercises there , but they don 't do them very well . There is a swimming pool too , but they all jump up and down in it with hats on . At their gate , there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it . He watches all day so nobody can escape . Sometimes they sneak out , and go cruising in their golf carts . Nobody there cooks , they just eat out . And , they eat the same thing every night - early birds . Some of the people can 't get out past the man in the doll house . The ones who do get out , bring food back to the wrecked center for pot luck . My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and , says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too . When I earn my retardment , I want to be the man in the doll house . Then I will let people out , so they can visit their grandchildren . Read more . . . A frail old man went to live with his son , daughter - in - law , and four - year - old grandson . The old man 's hands trembled , his eyesight was blurred , and his step faltered The family ate together at the table . But the elderly grandfather 's shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult . Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor . When he grasped the glass , milk spilled on the tablecloth . The son and daughter - in - law became irritated with the mess . ' We must do something about father , ' said the son . ' I 've had enough of his spilled milk , noisy eating , and food on the floor . ' So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner . There , Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner . Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two , his food was served in a wooden bowl . When the family glanced in Grandfather 's direction , sometimes he had a tear in his eye as he sat alone . Still , the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food . The four - year - old watched it all in silence . One evening before supper , the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor . He asked the child sweetly , ' What are you making ? ' Just as sweetly , the boy responded , ' Oh , I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food in when I grow up . ' The four - year - old smiled and went back to work . The words so struck the parents that they were speechless . Then tears started to stream down their cheeks . Though no word was spoken , both knew what must be done . That evening the husband took Grandfather 's hand and gently led him back to the family table . For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family . And for some reason , neither husband nor wife seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped , milk spilled , or the tablecloth soiled . Read more . . . As a child , you love your daddy … and then you notice the way he treats your mommy . Or maybe he abuses you . After one abuse too many , the love turns to hate … and you are through with him . Maybe it 's your job you love … and then you get a new boss . You begin to dread going to work … and soon hate your job . Exactly where is the line between love and hate ? It can work in reverse too . Since you don 't want to say you hate anyone , you tell people you can 't stand your mother - in - law . But as the years pass and your husband shares his stories about his mother , you begin to understand where she is coming from … and you can now love her . Have you crossed the line ? I try to exercise at least five days a week … and always include the treadmill . Since I have a problem with dizziness , it is imperative that I hang on as I walk . I listen to Chuck Swindoll 's podcast while I exercise … focusing on his words . This morning , in the back of my mind , I kept wondering what was wrong with my fingers . I would feel a sharp pain … and move my hand to a different position … not wanting to be bothered as I concentrated on the words in my ears . This constant moving of my hands went on throughout the entire podcast . Only when the broadcast was over did I begin to analyze the pain situation . I was being shocked by the treadmill . Moving my hands to the plastic casing around the reader screen , the pain went away . I got off the treadmill . Life is like that . There may be something in the back of our mind that is troubling us , but we stay focused on something else and try to ignore that little warning . Maybe we need to apologize to someone … maybe we aren 't sure if everything is ok between us and another person . Perhaps we have a habit that just may not be good for us … but we adjust our thinking … rationalizing … and keep on walking . It 's time to get off the treadmill . Read more . . . As I backed out of the driveway this morning , I reached for my sunglasses … an action I had not taken since a week before Thanksgiving . At work , co - workers excitedly talked about the sunshine … customers mentioned it . Our weather has been a mixture of snow , freezing fog , sleet , freezing rain ( not sure what the difference is there ) and ice pellets . But through all of that gray , the sun was still there , doing its job . Even though we couldn 't see it , we still knew it was there . Life is like that . Our gray weather may come in the form of illness … or money issues . But through all of the trials , the Son is still there , doing His job . Even though it doesn 't seem like it , we just need to believe He is still there . It 's called trust . Read more . . . When I was in elementary school , we had a neighbor named Stella Keane . She decorated an eggshell for me . . . and it is still in one piece . Lots of memories in this life moment . Read more . . . Winter arrived early for us . For over a week we 've had snow , freezing fog and ice pellets . Then the temperature briefly went above 32 . So the snow turned to slush , which allowed the car tires to make ruts . As evening came , the temperature dropped and the ruts froze . Once your tires are in a rut , it 's hard to change lanes or turn a corner . Some people drive like they plan to stay in the rut forever . Others gun it and do an ice dance trying to get out of the rut . Life is like that . Sometimes we get in a rut . It 's nice and safe in our rut , so we settle in and make the journey . Others rebel , doing all kinds of dancing … drugs , drinking , overeating . There are safe ways to climb out of the rut . Let 's do that . Read more . . . It all started 15 years ago when my friend gave me a ceramic church and said , " I think you should start a village . Here 's your first piece . " Over the years … with help of friends and family … my village grew to a small town … which I named Cottonwood . At Christmas time , the living room of our house became a village . Then we built a new home . As I looked at the plans … and watched the house go up … I knew the day would come when I would have to decide what to do about my village . That day came over the Thanksgiving holiday . As I unpacked each piece , I was assailed with memories . Our granddaughter helping put it up . My grown daughters having a turn at arranging it . Borrowing neighbor children , when putting it up alone was no fun . And always Christmas music and hot chocolate . So I sorted … pausing to remember … as I released the village . The table in the front hall has some houses . The window sill in the living room has the business section … with a grocery store , dentist , antique store , book store and café . The mantel is graced with a bank , City Hall , bookstore and café , ( notice I love books ) a school and church . And on a table in my room is a bed and breakfast , two large houses and a carriage house . The other half I gave to my daughter . She teaches middle school … and plans to make memories with her children as they arrange and re - arrange the village . There will be Christmas music and hot chocolate . Read more . . . I took the day before Thanksgiving off from work . The weather outside was not delightful , although the snow was pretty to look at . I still needed to go to the grocery store , but thought I would wait until the temperature climbed above 4 . So I settled down with some tea and the newspaper . The name at the top of the obituary page caught my attention . She was only 47 . And I knew her name well . She had been an employee of ours . As I sat there … shocked … my thoughts whirled . Had we done everything we could to help her ? Could we have done more ? Due to health problems , she had to quit working . But that had been several years ago . Gradually , over the years , we had lost touch . And now it was too late . As I pondered what our actions had been , I remembered the times we had been to the hospital to visit her , the trips to her home , helping with meals and giving hugs . We had many long talks . The time for talking was over . Life is like that . We never know whose name may be in the obituaries . Is there someone you need to call … or go visit ? Read more . . . This year my basket of Thanksgiving is overflowing . I am so blessed … and so very grateful . February 27th we moved into our new house . I still walk around pinching myself to make sure it 's real . The temperature dipped to 4 degrees last night . We were warm and toasty . There are those who have no bed or shelter . So grateful . July 23rd I watched as the doctor placed paddles on my husband 's chest … to shock his heart and make it stop . Electrocardioversion … a new word in my vocabulary . His heart had been beating erratically since January . None of the other options had worked . At the time of shocking , his heart was beating 140 beats per minute . Immediately upon the 100 jewels shock , his heart rate was 80 . This treatment is not successful for everyone . So grateful . December 5th I will turn 68 . Yet I can walk , talk , hear , see , eat , sleep and enjoy life . Daily I see others my age who can 't do one or more of those things . So grateful . Read more . . . Elena Gorokhova grew up in the USSR . She shares stories that have been passed down to her , along with her memories of life after WWII . You chuckle at some of her family life and cringe at other aspects . Her desire to expand her world leads her to marry an American … and she leaves one world for another . Fascinating book . Read more . . . Shopping is not my favorite thing . I want to go in the store , find what I want , buy it and leave . Since we were planning a Thanksgiving pie social at our house , my husband , John , and I decided we could use some sturdy wooden T . V . trays . Penney 's is pretty much the only store I shop in , and they had some on sale . I enlisted John 's help and off we went to buy the trays . We located the section of the store where the boxes of trays were stacked . But they were heavy and we needed assistance . To get to our car we would have to take the boxes down the escalator , through the store and across the parking lot . So we sought help . The young sales lady was less than pleased to be asked to do anything . She finally agreed to walk to the spot where the trays were on display . We explained we wanted to purchase two boxes and asked about help getting them to the car . She mumbled something about being able to take care of that and proceeded to walk back to the cash register . Within minutes she had rung up the sale … three boxes . When I told her we only wanted two boxes , she really didn 't like that , but decided to change it . I paid the bill and then John asked about where we would pick up the two boxes . " Kellogg . " Kellogg is one of the main streets in our city . I thought , I didn 't realize Penney 's had a warehouse on Kellogg . As I tried to visualize where on Kellogg , John asked again , " Where ? " " At Kellogg . " It took several tries before we finally understood she was saying " catalog . " Now we knew we were to get our car , drive around to the door where the catalog department was and pick up our purchases there . I still don 't care for shopping . This was a life moment for me . I had an attitude problem . My thoughts : I really like Penney 's . Why would they hire someone like that ? With all the people needing a job , I 'm sure they could find someone nicer … who cared about helping us . And just as quickly , I knew I needed to adjust my attitude . I have never walked in that sales lady 's shoes . She eventually did help us . I made the purchase I wanted . What was my problem ? Life is like that . Our attitude is a moment by moment decision . Read more . . . We have a new house … which came with a new garage . J So it 's taken me a little while to get comfortable driving in . I have only inches to spare on each side of the car … or I lose a mirror . Right in front of my car is the furnace . I 've chosen to use it as my guide . There is a small notch on my windshield wiper blade . That notch needs to be just at the left edge of the red box on the furnace . And to make sure I am in far enough , the hood of my car goes right at the bottom of that red box . It works every time . Life is like that . We need a guide … a focal point … to help us as we take this journey . If we get too far to the left , we lose something . If we stray too far to the right , we are in trouble . We need a guide we can count on to always be there … in the same place … every time . My Guide has a name … Jesus . I was listening intently to the pastor as he described Heaven . Totally focused on visualizing a cube 1 , 500 miles wide , deep and tall , it took a moment for the anguished crying to penetrate . Suddenly a little girl appeared , running down the aisle . When she reached the front of the church , she turned facing the congregation . The look on her face was one of utter terror . The sound coming from her throat was indescribable . She didn 't know which way to go . After pausing for a moment , she … and the sounds she was making … ran back up the aisle toward the back of the church . I heard later that she was on the wrong aisle . It took awhile for her family to get to her . As I looked at her face , I understood that expression . I 've been there … utterly terrified and not sure which way to go . It 's a horrible feeling . Sometimes life throws us such a curve that we run madly to and fro , not sure which way to go . We can 't make decisions . Our mind gets fuzzy and sleep eludes us . Maybe it 's your finances , or your marriage . Perhaps the doctor has said the word cancer . What do you do when terror takes over ? Some people turn to drugs and drinking . Others become a recluse and shut everyone else out . Some of us turn to God . Read more . . . Yesterday , as I ran errands , I ended up first in line in a middle lane at a red light … at a very busy intersection . I heard sirens . Turning off my music and putting down the window , I could tell they were headed my way . But from what direction ? My light turned green . Since there were cars on my right , I couldn 't pull over and wait . I glanced around the intersection . No one was moving . The driver of the car behind me blared his horn . Other cars in other lanes were honking their impatience . Still no one moved . I was uncomfortable as I stood my ground … not moving . But I could be T - boned in the middle of the intersection if I moved forward . Finally , the emergency vehicles passed me in the left lane , turning at the intersection . The light had turned red again . As I sat and waited for another green light , I wondered about the people in the cars with the honking horns . Had their music been too loud to hear the sirens ? Or had they heard them , but were too impatient to care ? Life is like that . Sometimes we hear sirens . Oh , they aren 't audible to others , but we feel them in our being . It 's difficult to stand up to another person who has no patience for what we believe . Or maybe they have their own agenda and just really don 't care . Others may have such heavy peer pressure that to put us down is the only way they know how to behave . Stand your ground . It may be more than your life you save . Read more . . . Still learning . Been playing with this site for awhile . Some of you are having trouble knowing how to leave a comment . I added some instructions , but I think you need to click on " comment " to get to them . Hope you are having a blessed day . Please keep in touch . Here we go ! This is a new adventure for me … one I 've looked forward to for a few years . My hope is that as you read the words I post , you will take the time to pause and let the meaning sink in . If just one person leaves this website with a little different understanding about their life … with just a little bit more hope … a clearer direction , then my dream will have come true . Let 's start off with a video … but don 't get used to that . The timing was perfect for this to come to me in an email , just when I 'm trying to start a blog on Life Moments . This is a perfect example of a " life moment . " If you had been a shopper , would you have paused … lingered … and listened ? And now I have to figure out how to put the video here . Let 's pause for a commercial . Read more . . . |
I had been a stewardess for six years and I loved every minute of it . Having been drafted to work in munitions factories throughout the war years it was like a new life . I was able to travel , and in style . I had almost been refused the position at my interview . I looked okay . Five feet and ten inches tall , slim and not too bad looking I thought . Short dark , wavy hair , high cheek bones accentuating my large dark brown eyes but my long slender fingers ended in rather ragged nails and dry skin due to the ravishes of the munitions and chemicals I had spent so long working with . " Good morning , Ladies . " She spoke without a single smile , her face blank and professional . " I am Pamela Barnes , the chief stewardess at this training centre . " " Hmm , " she said . " A good effort but you have a lot to learn about make - up and presentation . That , of course , is why we are here . " " Oh dear , oh dear . This will simply just not do . Tut tut tut . " She shook her head and turned away as the extremities of my lips began to take a definite southwards turn and I looked down at my hands . " I cannot have my girls showing hands in such a terrible state , " she said , not angrily but not gently either . " I had been informed that you were coming so I had these gloves brought in . You will wear them at all times when on duty and in uniform . If I see you without them there will be no second chances . We have an image to maintain . " Pamela Barnes complimented me on my appearance and how well I had done to reach the strict standard that the airline demanded . As she paused before me whilst the director presented the next girl 's wings , Pamela leaned forwards and whispered , " Congratulations and very well done . I knew you could do it . " For the first time , she smiled . There wasn 't much to do , the aircraft had been cleaned and prepared by the ground staff so I walked up the steep aisle to the front , checking seat belts and antimacassars as I went . There were just twenty - four seats on this particular aeroplane , twin rows to the left and single to the right . Some of the later aircraft had thirty two seats , two either side , but this was one of the airlines premier flights and the larger , more comfortable seats had been retained . " Thank you , Karen . Yes , you may bring them aboard now . I am just going to do the walk round outside and by that time we should be ready to leave . " The taxiway was a little bumpy as we moved along it and , before the runway , the aeroplane came to a gentle halt . For a moment , the engines revved and the airframe vibrated . I knew from experience that the pilots were checking the engines before take - off and , once again as I expected , the brakes came off and we rolled forwards onto the long runway . I froze momentarily . Not from fear but anger . I was used to this now . Horny men just having to touch me because my uniform turned them on . It didn 't happen every day but often enough for it to be extremely irritating . I took a deep breath , placed the glass on the table and straightened up . The hand had now reached the lacy top of my stocking and I turned to admonish the man in the single seat behind . The hand pulled quickly away as I swung round , my face showing the anger I felt but I stopped and looked in surprise at the beautiful woman who was sitting there . I was stunned ! I had never been molested by a woman before and certainly not one as smart and attractive as her ! A shiver ran down my spine and such a weird feeling came over me . The anger had vanished as quickly as it had begun and all of a sudden I felt a kind of tingle , something I had never felt before . I didn 't understand it . Each time I passed that rear single seat , Jemima watched me intensely and I was getting more and more self conscious . Whenever I served her she found a way to touch me . Nothing as much as that first time but contact , however small was like an electric shock to me . I placed a glass in front of her and she touched my hand . I jumped . I took away her empty glass and her knee would somehow touch mine . I jumped . Two hours into the flight and I was struggling . I couldn 't breathe and my heart was beating like a drum . I couldn 't control it but worse , I didn 't understand it . I was normally so controlled , in control . This was my aeroplane , I was in charge , I was the stewardess but now , one of my passengers was distracting me and I was scared . I pondered her name . It sounded Indian . That would explain her beautiful hair and deep brown almond shaped eyes but she had no hint of an accent and she didn 't seem as eastern as I would have expected . She was certainly not dressed in the style of the east . She wore a white fitted blouse and dark grey , above the knee , pencil skirt . I had noticed a matching jacket in the overhead rack above her . I had noticed that she wore two rings on the third finger of her left hand . One appeared to be a plain wedding band which I guessed , due to its silver colour , was white gold next to a matching solitaire containing a large but discretely mounted diamond . It didn 't look brash but definitely expensive ! " Oh Crumbs , yes . Sorry , Bob , I was miles away . " The adrenalin was rushing through my veins and arteries and it took me a moment to regain my composure . All thoughts of the mysterious Mrs . Rana were dismissed as I busied myself with the task of brewing fresh coffee . When it was ready I filled two cups and placed them on saucers on a small tray along with a small jug of milk and a bowl of sugar . Then I placed a teaspoon on each of the saucers . Finally , I put some biscuits onto a small plate and onto the tray . " Don 't worry , Karen , I am just teasing . " He took the steaming cup and saucer from me . " Bob told me you were . He also said he startled you . " " I did apologise , " Bob Donnelly chimed in from the left as he took his cup from my outstretched hand . He paused whilst we both held the saucer . " I must say , though , it is not like you to be so easily surprised . " One of the things I loved about my job was the view . The ground looked so small and today there were no clouds . We were flying over France and far below us I could see fields , trees and tiny houses and towns . It was like flying over a map , wonderful . Both her parents had been shot by the Nazis for daring to stand up to them when their home was raided after a neighbour accused them of being Jews in 1944 . Luckily for Erika she had been away from home at the time and had not been involved but after the soviets arrived things were no better . The Russian soldiers were like animals and hated all things German . They were out for revenge for what had happened to them when they were invaded and no woman was safe . Many being raped and even murdered . She had taken off her shoes so there would be no sound from her heels as she flitted from shadow to shadow , stopping constantly to look and listen , pressing herself into a doorway when a police patrol drove past . Her dark woollen coat helped her to blend in and not be seen as the car drove slowly by , her heart beating so loudly in her ears she was surprised they hadn 't heard it . For a second she thought the policeman in the passenger seat had seen her as he looked straight at her but , no , they continued on their patrol without even a pause and , once again , the street was empty and quiet . " Hey ! " a man 's voice shouting , " What are you doing there ? " Erika froze in the doorway , not daring to breathe . There was a crash and a dog yelped , " Get away from here , damned dogs ! " A door slammed and quiet returned once more . She thought about her cousins , Markus and Franke . She visited them often in happier times but since the country had been divided she had not seen them at all . They wrote frequently to each other but had to be careful in case her mail was intercepted and checked . She knew that Markus had become a policeman after the war . He was younger than she was , just twenty seven , and his sister who was the same age as Erika , was an ambulance driver . They had survived the war as Franke had become a nurse in 1939 and moved to ambulances in 1943 and when the war came to a close , Markus had deserted and Franke hid him until it was safe . Later , as Erika lay awake in her bed , she thought about how she would get across . There was the fence with barbed wire and there was also , possibly , a minefield . Even if there wasn 't , there were almost certainly alarms and she had seen the watch towers and armed guards for herself . Elsa Schröder was the same age as Erika . Her father had been killed in August , 1944 during an air raid by the American 91st bomb group and her mother passed away soon after . The doctors said she had a heart attack but Elsa preferred to believed she had died from the grief of losing her father . As a result of both losing their parents in such tragic circumstances the two women had grown up together . They had no other friends and Elsa didn 't seem that worried that she had never met a husband . When she worked she always wore trousers instead of a skirt and although she was very pretty and had a stereotypical Germanic appearance of blonde hair and blue eyes she kept her hair cut short so , when she wore her uniform she looked more like a young boy than a grown woman . It was Sunday . The dress shop where Erika worked was closed and she had the day to herself . Elsa was also off work as this was her Sunday off too . About midday , Erika walked the half kilometre to her friends house and knocked on the door . It opened slowly and a worried Elsa peered out . When she saw who it was she said urgently : " I know , I heard . It wasn 't my fault though . How could I be here when I had been sent to work in Berlin ? " The dark haired woman felt as though her friend was blaming her for what had happened , as though it was her fault she had not been there . Soon , they walked together to the kitchen . Erika took off her coat and placed it on the back of the chair and sat at the little table where Elsa had prepared a pot of fresh coffee . They drank in silence for a dew minutes until Erika spoke : " You know I have cousins in Bad Hersfeld ? I will stay with them until I find a place of my own . " As she spoke , slowly and deliberately , she watched Elsa 's eyes narrow . " I don 't know . I am so tired I can 't think but we will work it out together . " Erika covered her mouth as she yawned then continued , " I didn 't sleep last night , either . I lay awake thinking of so many things . " Erika began to undress , first unbuttoning her blouse and slipping it from her shoulders , placing it neatly on the chair at the end of the bed then unfastened her skirt and stepped out of it , folding it neatly and placing it with her blouse , on the chair . Finally removing her shoes and placing them beneath the same chair . Now dressed in bra , pants and stockings she waited until Elsa had also undressed and watched , with a hint of sadness , as her friend removed her underwear and climbed into bed , beckoning her to join her . Without all her masculine clothes , Erika saw that Elsa was a beautiful woman . She was tall and slim with small firm breasts and not a hint of fat and she was pretty as a picture with her ice blue eyes shining out of her elf like face which was accentuated by her short blonde hair . She deserved to find a man to love her and not spend her life alone . There had been somebody once , during the war whilst she worked as a typist in Berlin . He had been a soldier in the Wehrmacht and was ten years older than her . He had been posted to Berlin after losing the use of a leg after being blown up by a shell but he was kind and considerate and Erika loved him dearly . They had been together for nearly a year and had become so close that they trusted each other implicitly and he often told her how much he hated the Nazis and couldn 't wait for the war to end . Sadly , he had been killed in a raid as Berlin came under more frequent attacks when Germany was succumbing to the allied advance . Later she opened her dark brown eyes and looked into Elsa 's , lying naked in her arms . What she saw through those beautiful , ice blue windows was love , joy and even peace . Moving her head forwards she placed a kiss firmly onto the other woman 's lips who responded eagerly . For some time they lay in each others arms , silently . No words were needed but soon the room began to darken as the sun set . " Yes , " came the reply , " Well , no , not exactly . I have loved you for a long time but I didn 't dare tell you because you have never shown any interest in me that way . I was afraid that if I said something you would leave me and to have you as a friend and love you from afar was better than losing you completely . " She looked at Erika intently , worried at what she would say but when no answer was forth coming she continued , " Do you understand me now ? You are not angry with me are you ? " " No , Elsa , I am not angry . You are right , I didn 't think of you that way . I have never thought of any woman that way but feeling you next to me in the bed , your warm body against mine , I knew that we were meant to be together . That I love you more than just as a friend and that I never want to lose you , ever . " With that , she stood and walked around to the other side of the table and kissed her new lover as if to seal their new found happiness , then sat on Elsa 's knee . They placed their arms around each other and held each other with Erika resting her head on top of Elsa 's . " We cannot stay here now . " she said , without moving , " If anyone finds out about us we will be reported to the Stasi . We have to leave , and soon . " " Well , my first idea is that I get on the train at Eisenach and you hide me somewhere on board . Then , when we get to the border maybe one of the others could get you a Deutsche Bahn uniform to change into and you stay on board until we get to Bad Hersfeld . What do you think ? " The two of them sat down together and ate the meal they had prepared . They had done this so many times but now it was different . They were no longer just friends they were lovers and together nothing would stop them . " Don 't take any chances . If you feel you cannot trust anyone then we will find another way . One way or another , we will get across the border and we will be together . For ever . " One night , she sat alone in her apartment , listening to the radio . A young man had been shot dead trying to escape to the west in Berlin . The newsreader reported a spokesman as saying he was a traitor to the state and all such attempts to defect would be treated as treason . Erika shuddered but they could not stay , especially now . If the Stasi found out about them they would be arrested anyway . Risking death would be a fair price to pay if she and Elsa could be together safely . " I 'm sorry , " Elsa said , " but I had to see you before you went to the shop . I risked telling one of the conductors about our plan . He promised to help but could only get one uniform . I have brought it here in case he tells anyone and they search my apartment . " " I know , ' Rika , but there is worse news . The uniform belongs to a colleague of his who is away on holiday . She doesn 't know he has it . We have to go before next Saturday so he can return it without her knowing ! " " A week ! ? " Erika exclaimed . She thought for a moment then , " Fine , we can do it " . She took Elsa 's face in her hands and looked into her eyes , " We will do it ! " Erika shuddered but they could not stay , especially now . If the Stasi found out about them they would be arrested anyway . Risking death would be a fair price to pay if she and Elsa could be together safely . " No . " came the answer , much to Elsa 's surprise . " Meet me at the shop at five , when I finish . I don 't care if people see us . Only we know that something is different now , they don 't . " Just before five , the shop door bell tinkled . Erika looked up from the dress she was repairing expecting to see Elsa but instead there was a man wearing a dark raincoat and trilby hat . he looked very severe and Erika immediately identified him as a secret policeman , Stasi ! " ' Rika , I don 't like being afraid again . It is worse than when the Russians came . At least we knew who the enemy was . Now we can 't trust anyone . " " Yes , " Elsa answered , " There are several options but there is only one opportunity where we have the best chance and that is Thursday night . There is a border guard who likes me . He keeps asking me to go out with him . I always refuse , of course , but I think he is more likely to let me go if he finds out what is happening . Thursday is the only day this week where he , I and the other conductor are scheduled to be on duty at the same time . " " I have an idea . You get a ticket to Eisenach from Gotha . Obviously you will not get off at Eisenach . I am the conductor on that train . When we leave Eisenach , you go into the toilet and put on the uniform and stay there until the train stops at the border crossing . The West Germans get on there and you can come out when they are there . I will get off with my colleagues but will get back on and hide until the train moves again . Once the train is moving , the guards will have got off and we will be free . " " I have thought about that . The guard believes anything I tell him . I just tell him I have left my hand bag or ticket machine or something . I will stay in the guards office until the train moves off . He will not question me if he has already had an explanation . " She thought about her friend beside her and how long they had been friends . She thought about her cousins in Bad Hersfeld . She couldn 't tell them she was coming and she just had to hope they would be pleased to see her . What if it went wrong and they were caught ? She shivered . She couldn 't think about that . It just had to be a case of what will be will be . She looked down at her friend . Elsa was right , there really was no - one else to depend on , no - one who could be trusted . It was only going to be the two of them for the rest of their lives . Erika closed the door quietly after Elsa left and rested her head against it for a moment . Now she was scared . From this moment on she would think of nothing else but the days ahead which could mean a new life for both of them or , quite simply , Death ! Erika spent the next day , Sunday , alone as Elsa was scheduled to work so she busied herself with cleaning and tidying her apartment . After she had gone she didn 't want anyone saying she was dirty and untidy . She would probably never see Eisenach again but that didn 't matter . Besides , she didn 't want to stop and think about what may happen on Thursday . She would worry about that enough as the day drew near . Erika thought for a moment . Her conscience would not let her take an order for something so important to him , knowing full well she would not be here to finish it . She steeled herself to let him down as gently as she could . " If I could make a suggestion , " she spoke hesitantly , " I could take your order and begin the process , making sure you get what you want , then pass it on to one of my associates . They are very good too . The only thing is I cannot oversee the work and you would have to speak directly with them . " The next hour went by quickly as they perused pattern books and Herr Braun finally chose a dress that he thought would suit his wife . He had brought a photograph of her to help Erika find suitable fabrics and colours . She was plain but tall and elegant and soon they had chosen something they both felt would look beautiful on her . After he had left , Erika felt a little sad that she would not see the finished article . Frau Braun was going to look lovely in what they had chosen for her . It made her realise just what she was giving up . She could never return to Eisenach once she left , her whole life was here . Even though she had no family here and her only friend , her lover , was going with her , she would still miss it . " No , " she replied with a weary smile , " Don 't worry . We can 't stay even if we wanted to . Not if we are going to be together . " " Oh … well , " Elsa stammered , " I just thought , well assumed , that you and I would be together . Is that not what you want ? " She looked serious . The next two days were like a lifetime to Erika . it felt as though Thursday would never come but it did and , at five , she locked the shop for the last time . Placed the key in an envelope and posted it back through the letter box for her associate who worked with her , then headed towards the station for the train to Gotha . She was carrying her largest shoulder bag and a brown paper parcel which contained the Deutsche Bahn uniform . At Gotha she had about an hour to wait for the last train which crossed the border . It was the longest hour of her life . Every time she looked at the station clock it felt as though it had stopped . " Eisenach . Passengers not alighting here please have your passes and passports ready for inspection at the border . Passengers not passing into the west please alight here . Eisenach the next stop . " With as much haste as she could muster in such a small space she took off her coat and skirt . She was already wearing the uniform shirt and she unwrapped the skirt and jacket from the parcel and put them on . Finally , she put her hair up into a bun and placed the cap on her head then checked herself in the mirror . The tie , she had almost forgotten the tie and with some difficulty , she had never used a tie in her life , managed to get something that passed as a proper knot . " Listen , " he whispered , " I am the captain of the guards here . I can make it as though this never happened . Go home , back to Eisenach and it will be as if you were never here . Finish my dress , with a big discount of course , and all will be as it was . " But Elsa didn 't run . She grabbed the only friend she ever wanted and began to half drag and half carry her to the western side . The rifles fired again and Erika found new strength to try to run . Herr Dieter Braun got his wife 's dress but it didn 't make him happy . It was finished by Erika 's associate and it fitted perfectly . His wife adored it and it suited her but he could not forgive himself for being the one who had shot the person who designed it and should have made it . He never allowed his wife to wear it . The bullet had passed through Erika 's bag and been slowed by the photo album she couldn 't bring herself to leave behind so that when it entered her body it didn 't have enough velocity to do any serious damage but the blood loss and shock had caused her to lose consciousness . Inside the album was a photograph of her parents and the bullet had passed through the centre of the two of them . She always said that they were watching over her that day and saved her life . Neither Dieter Braun nor his wife attended the service . It was said that he was so eaten with guilt that he was never the same again . He passed away of a heart attack in 1974 . He never knew that the two women had survived . His wife died six years later . |
My office window needed cleaning . I could always tell because the patterns of dried smoke and LA haze got more interesting than whatever was in my typewriter . Today they looked like dragons , with maidens over easy on the side . I couldn 't find any knights or white chargers , but then this was the summer of 1933 and the whole world was a little depressed . The phone started up in the middle of a sentence . I tried to finish it out over the ringing , but it was no good . I picked up the receiver . " Chandler ? " It was a woman 's voice , with the kind of sweetness that has money or power or both lined up behind it . It was a nice voice , if you happened to be wearing a tuxedo . It clashed a little with my blue serge . " That 's right , " I agreed with her . " What can I do for you ? " " My name is Cooper , Mrs . Francis Cooper . Francis and I are recently married , and I love him very much . " " That 's very nice , I 'm sure , Mrs . Cooper , but I don 't do love stories . Or confessions . " She stiffened her voice , like a trumpeter getting his lip ready for a high one . " This is not to do with our personal lives . My husband runs a recording studio , Hollywood Recording Center , and I wanted you to know I 'm concerned for him . " " Go on . " " The studio publishes a magazine , which I edit , called Off the Record . " I winced a little but let her keep going . " It 's sort of a trade publication for the music industry . I was wondering if you might be interested in contributing a short story to us , something to do with music or records ? " " I 'm afraid I don 't know anything about music or records . " I had to watch myself . My voice was starting to get a nasty edge to it . " We 'd be happy to have you down at the studio . In fact , there 's a recording session this afternoon , and I could show you around . You see , the magazine is not doing well , and the whole industry is in a bit of a slump . A story by you could get a little interest going in both . " I lit a cigarette . On days like this I wished I had a secretary to deal with the weirdoes , the publicity hungry , all the nut cases in Souther " You shouldn 't come on like such a tough guy , Chandler . The CB loves tough guys . He chews ' em up and spits ' em out again , just for the exercise . " I didn 't say anything , hoping the silence would tempt him beyond his endurance . It did . " Okey , scribbler . A simple message for you . Layoff the Cooper story . Read me ? " " I didn 't know you were in print , " I said , and hung up . Naturally I was hooked , tighter than an agent 's contract . They should have known better than to come on tough with me . Besides which , something about Greer irritated me a little . Call me hard to get along with , but I just don 't like the type . Give some people a blue pencil and they think they invented the language . I covered up the typewriter and turned out the lights . Then , on impulse , I went back to the desk and got out a pocket sized notebook , pencil , and extra leads . Something told me I might need them . The address was out 101 almost to Ventura , just north of the big movie lots . While I drove I turned a few things over in my mind . I had a plot lying around that could be dusted off , resoled , and still travel a few more miles . Something along the lines of the country boy making a hit of it as a singer , then mixing it up with the wrong sort of joes . All I really needed was to pick up a bit of background , a few phrases of shop talk , and I could whip the thing together in a day or two . Being in the financial shape that I still had to pull kite tricks with my bank account , the prospect of a solicited story was not so bad as I 'd tried to make out at first . By the time I 'd parked my Marmon in front of the Hollywood Recording Center I was almost looking forward to it . I told a receptionist who I was and got a nice smile for my trouble . She left the room and came back with an even nicer surprise . " Good afternoon , " the surprise said , " I 'm Jane Cooper . " She was five and a half feet of redhead that a less refined person might describe as luscious . Me , I just concentrated on keeping my eyes in my head and my mind on my job . Her body was long and willowy , like a volume of T . S . Elliot next to my Martin Chuzzlewit . Underneath the sleek red hair was a mouth that twinkled and shone , and had all the expression her eyes should have had . The eyes themselves weren 't as pleased with things as the mouth , and had that flat , hard look that some proofreaders get . I followed her back to an office . She took my hat and I took her offer of a drink . It seemed a pretty good deal at the time . She pointed out a chair for me , and I was glad she did . At first I had taken it for a hunting trophy , or perhaps a bloated pet cheetah . My feet disappeared in the carpet and the conditioned air smelled like nothing at all . " A bit of business first , " I said . " I get two cents a word against royalties , paid on acceptance . " " That 's pretty high , " she said , but before I could work my way out of the clutches of the chair , she held up a shapely , manicured hand . " But I 'll accept it . I assume I have final say on whether or not I want to publish it . " " Of course . " We drank , and she let me see the smile again . Her eyes were green , and promised depth and richness under other circumstances . At the moment I thought I saw a hint of nervousness in them . " My husband , " she said after a moment , " was not eager to see me bring in a writer . He feels the result would be . . . sensationalistic . I think he 'll change his mind . But if he should ask , you 're here about the carpets or something . " " All right , " I said , glad to know who had tipped Greer off , anyway . " Now suppose you tell me a bit about the record business . " It was a piece of cake . I lit my pipe and closed my eyes , and thought about what a piece of cake it was going to be . I didn 't need to take any notes . I just let the plot drip and congeal into the information she was giving me . I asked questions , but they were easy ones , like what do you call that , and how is this done . I soaked up all the color . I wanted to get it right . Somebody might want to reprint the story . After that I got the dime tour . She took me down a paneled hall and I could finally smell her perfume . It was worth the wait . It was the kind of perfume that keeps daring you to pin it down , and sneaks up on you when you give up . It reminded me of Paris , and a lot of other places I 'd never been to . There were two studios in the building . Studio A was empty and she took me in there first . It was the sort of room that makes you itch at the base of your neck . None of the walls was quite parallel and the ceiling sloped at a strange angle . All that it needed was a funhouse mirror and it would have been a barrel of laughs . In keeping , I assumed , with the latest theories , there were lots of wooden baffles with louvers standing around . I had to fight my way through the carpet on the floor . Microphones hung off of long metal booms , and there were lots of folding chairs and music stands . One wall was glass , and behind it was more electronics than I knew how to talk to . " What do you think ? " she asked me . " It 's swell , " I said . " When does the floor show start ? " " They 're getting ready to record next door , " she said . I wasn 't getting many laughs today . " I 'll just pop over and see if I can bring you in . " " Why don 't you just do that . " She sauntered out and the door clicked behind her . I felt like a eunuch in a harem , alone with a lot of valuable stuff I didn 't know what to do with . There was a pile of sheet music on top of a wooden stand . I thumbed through it . Some of the titles made me think I was in the wrong trade . Towards the bottom I saw a familiar color , and pulled out a thick foolscap manuscript . I looked at the title and the first page . Then I put it back at the bottom of the stack . I 'd have been more interested , but I didn 't write that kind of story . The door clicked open again and I smiled at Jane Cooper . " Do I rate ? " " Come along , " she said . Her schoolmistress manner was beginning to grate , but then I could tell I wasn 't making her day either . Some people just react to me that way . She took me across the hall . This was supposed to be Studio B , but for my money it was Studio A with the door on the other side . A six piece band was camped out on the rug , making smoke signals and swapping notes in musical shorthand . Three kids with short hair and sweaters sat around a microphone that was a little smaller than a cigar box . They were close to the glass wall , probably so the big boys could keep an eye on them . They were smoking too , and I was beginning to feel left out , so I relit my pipe . Mrs . Cooper showed me where to sit , and then demonstrated the proper method . I followed suit and looked at the fellows on the other side of the glass . They were all wearing headphones and nodding to each other . They seemed to be enjoying whatever it was that they were listening to , and I was happy for them . The college types in the sweaters seemed to be having fun , too . Then the band started a cheerful little dance number and that made it unanimous . We were sitting close to the door , probably so they could whisk me out if I misbehaved . There was a little pile of music under my chair , so I flipped through it to see if there were any more budding literary efforts about . " Okey , that 's enough , " said a voice in my ear , and I sat up , startled . " Everything balances out pretty good , " the voice went on , and I saw that it came out of the sound system in the walls . " That 's my husband , " said Mrs . Cooper , and pointed at a figure behind the glass . I kept myself from waving to him . He noticed me anyway , though , and looked at me the way a cat looks at a mouse . He was beefy , and he had the years on his wife - - fifteen of them , at least . Not that he was decrepit , but he had an air of settled in depravity that takes years to cultivate . But then , I was looking at him through a double wall of glass , and maybe I was letting my imagination run a little free . Somebody else " I 'm sure , " he said , so quiet that I couldn 't believe I 'd actually heard it over my own voice . But I had , and it shut me up to boot . The man dripped authority like a duck dripped water . " Come along , " he said to his wife . " What about Mr . Morton ? " she asked with offhand concern . She was good . She was very good . " Leave him . " He turned a smile on me that was thinner than tissue paper . I couldn 't have dropped a dime on it . " You 'll see what you need rather quickly , won 't you ? " " Yes sir , " I said . " And I know my way out . " " That 's good . " He wasn 't big , he just made you think he was . And somehow he didn 't look pleasant to touch . A little clammy . Maybe it was something in the watery blue eyes or the pallid complexion . Or the way his shoes squeaked , even through the fathoms of carpet . After they were gone , a voice said Rico was bringing the lyrics . I sat down like a good boy while the sheets were being passed around , The three collegiates huddled up at the piano and talked their way through the piece , then stepped back and fitted their voices together like the pieces of a puzzle . The tune was nothing , a bit of fluff about standing on a street corner , but then I 'm no judge . They seemed to like it . The whole thing got done in about forty minutes , counting playbacks . Afterwards , the drummer lit a cigarette and looked at me . " You look more like a hack than a secretary , " he said . " I might be , " I said . " What 's it to you ? " " Nothing to get tough over . Just one artist to another . " " Ars longa , vita brevis ? " I asked . " Never heard of ' em , " he said . " Who 're they with ? " " You and I should get along , " I said , and accepted one of his Luckies . " You work here much ? " He laughed . He was past his good days , a little , with the sort of wrinkled , musty look men get when they live alone too long . I had a bit of that look myself . I could smell his hair tonic . " Nobody works very much here . Once or twice a week 's about all . " I was almost interested . " Why 's that ? " " Hell , brother , there 's a depression on . " " I 've heard rumors about that . How do they keep the doors open ? " " The old man 's got money . I don 't know where from , but it ain 't from here . " He looked like he had something else to tell me . I tried to warm him up to it . " You got any ideas ? " " Well , he owns the pressing plant next door . Maybe he gets business there . Presses the records , prints the albums for them , everything . " " Is that usual ? " " It 's pretty damned unusual . And I 'll tell you something else . This song we cut will be on the radio by tomorrow night . That 's so unusual , it doesn 't happen anywhere else in the world . Some people wait months for their songs to get played . But then , some other people know how to get things done . " The way he rubbed his fingers together , I could practically see the bills . " That way , huh ? " " That 's right , brother . Some people might call it a payoff , but me , I call it a living . " I 'd seen what I 'd come to see . I didn 't expect to see Jane Cooper for a while . I started off in search of my hat . " Don 't take my word for it , brother , " the drummer whispered . " Station KXY , seven o ' clock . The day of the month matches the song . " I gave him a wink and a thumbs up . My hat was at receptionist 's desk . She forgot to ask me to come back soon . I skipped the office and went on home . There was a typewriter there , too . I put in an hour or so when I got back , but before long I was running into snags . The characters were growing out of the situation nicely enough , but the situation was in trouble . It kept getting itself tied up in details . I got an ice cube and carried it into the living room where a glass and a bottle were waiting for it . The bottle held charcoal - aged Tennessee sipping whiskey . It was seven years old . I got out a book with stiff blue covers and set up a Scrabble game between Bennett Cerf and James Joyce . It was only a couple years old , played by mail while they were trying to arrange to publish Joyce 's book . Cerf was the technician , master of the doubles and triples , but Joyce had the vocabulary all over him . I was interrupted by a knock at the door . I opened it to find Greer and a young proofreader I 'd never seen before . Greer 's eyes swept the place neater than a broom , then he sat down and put his feet up on my coffee table . " Nice joint , " he said . " Me , I can 't afford a nice joint on editor 's pay . " " Maybe you should go freelance , " I suggested , and showed a chair to the kid . " Just something I do to help me think . " " Yeah . Well here 's something to think about . If you try to print one word that smells of Cooper , or even the music business , you 'll find yourself back doing a long stretch at the Van Nuys News . " " What about your boyfriend ? " I asked . " Or is he just the strong , silent type ? " The kid was pimply , but mean . " Let me at ' im , " he said , real quiet , " just give me a few pages of ' script . I 'll make him glad to sell to the love pulps . " " Cute kid , " I said . " Yeah , " Greer said , " must be contagious . " He strolled over to my typewriter . He laid one huge ham of a hand across the keyboard . He put his weight against it . The keys started to knot and tangle themselves up . Metal squeaked and springs bent , and Greer kept pushing . When he left off , the keys were locked together tighter than the publishers in New York City . " Is this where I 'm supposed to offer you a drink ? " I asked . " Aww , save it for the critics , Chandler . You know I hate to pull rough stuff like that . " He was almost whining . " Why won 't you ever do what you 're told ? " " I was just kidding about the drink , " I said . " Come on , " Greer said to the kid . " Let 's get out of here . All this wit is making me hysterical . " The kid showed his teeth in a good approximation of a snarl , and drew a dark blue line through the word " ROYALTIES " on the Scrabble board . " I 'll remember you , Chandler . If you ever write one word that even looks like literature , I 'll burn your reputation to the ground . You still laughing ? " " I 'm crying inside , " I assured him . " Your friend found the door all right . I 'll bet you could , too . " It was after midnight by the time I got the place cleaned up , although the typewriter was pretty hopeless . Okey , I was a tough guy , I 'd use the one at the office . I fixed another drink , and decided to count the weeds in my back yard . I didn 't make it . As soon as I opened the glass door , it started raining anvils , and one of them clipped me on the skull . It was only a love tap , but I woke up feeling like a warm beer that somebody had poured out too fast . I hadn 't been out long - - there was still ice in the whiskey stain on the carpet . I got to my feet , all six of them , and tried to find the steps down off the merry - go - round . Then my stomach tried to crawl out my throat so I sat down again . After a couple of minutes I decided I felt no worse than Custer after Big Horn , and I still had most of my scalp besides . So I looked around the room from my ground level vantage point to see what was missing . I didn 't have to look very long or hard . The notebook was gone from my pocket , of course . The manuscript was gone too . I still had the empty glass in my hand , though , so I crawled to the bottle and gave myself a medicinal dose . I wished they hadn 't spilled my drink . It showed you what a low standard criminal types had any more . I had put a carbon of the story in my bedroom safe . After the whiskey started to work , I checked on it . It was still there . I looked at my head in the bathroom mirror . It was bad , but I didn 't faint . I was ready to put myself to bed when the phone rang again . It had been a day for interruptions . I was getting a little tired of them , but I snatched the earpiece off the hook anyway . " Chandler , " I said . I couldn 't locate the good humor to say hello . " This is Jane Cooper , Mr . Chandler . I hope I 'm not disturbing you . " " Actually , I was just closing a deal for New York with some Indians , but that 's all right . The bargaining was getting rough . " " I beg your pardon ? " " Nothing , Mrs . Cooper . Please go on . " " I 'm afraid I have some bad news . My husband and I quarreled , and he - - killed my magazine . " " Killed it ? " " Yes . It was his decision , really . He 's the publisher , and I 'm only the editor . It 's printed in the studio print shop , and financed by the studio . And he just , well , cut off the funds . I could pay you - - " " Not necessary . I 'm sorry about your magazine . " In truth , I was ceasing to care . I 'd lost markets before , some through death , some through new schedules or management . There were always other markets . " It 's been a long day , " I said . " I 've been threatened , had a typewriter broken , my head bashed , a story stolen , and now a market shot out from under me . If you don 't mind , I think I 'll call it a day before something bad happens to me . " " Someone hit you ? " she asked after a moment . " Yeah . I might have suggested your husband , but I get the idea he was with you . " " Yes . All night . We 'd been arguing for the last two hours , and he just now went to bed . " She got apologetic . " That 's why I called so late . " " Not to worry , Mrs . Cooper . I 'd only just finished a short nap . " " You seem quite expert at feeling sorry for yourself , " she said . " If you want something done right , " I answered , finishing another dose of medicine , " do it yourself . " " Are you always this flippant ? " I considered a couple of replies , but they were all on the obvious side so I let it ride . " All right , Mr . Chandler . I 'll leave you to your whiskey and witty dialogue . I 'm sorry to have put you to so much trouble for nothing . " " On the contrary , " I said . I was sitting on the floor , and I let my head fall back on the couch . I hoped I wasn 't getting blood on the slipcover . " I 'll finish the story and let my agent try to handle it somewhere else . I only have to clear up a couple of little details . " " Such as what ? " She seemed interested again , all of a sudden . " Such as whether or not all studios keep a professional lyricist on the premises . " I lit a cigarette and drew the smoke down my lungs . " I 'm afraid I don 't know what you 're talking about . " " You have a man working at your studio named Rico who writes lyrics for your artists . I just wondered if this was a standard thing . " " I don 't know where you get your information , Mr . Chandler , but there is no such person at our studio . Lyricists work hand in hand with composers ; in fact , most are composers . Nobody adds lyrics after the music is written . That 's putting the horse after the cart . " " Then who wrote the lyrics for the song today ? " " You 're full of questions for someone who was trying to get off the phone a minute ago , " she snapped . " You 're awfully evasive for somebody who isn 't supposed to have anything to hide . " " I resent the implications of that remark , " she said in a chill tone . " But since I can 't see what difference it could possibly make , I 'll tell you . Danny , one of the singers , wrote the lyrics and the pianist wrote the melody . Satisfied ? " Her voice was crisp as a fresh salad , tangy as oil and vinegar . " For the moment . I 'm sorry about your magazine , Mrs . Cooper . Goodbye . " I hung up the phone and went to bed . I would have slept better lying on a railroad track , or on a football field during a conference championship . I know I wouldn 't have slept any worse . There was one position I could lie in where my head didn 't hurt . That was face down on my pillow , and then I couldn 't breathe . But I 'm a tough guy , so I held my breath . In the morning I called the studios again , ready to pitch my voice up if the Cooper woman came on . One of the engineers answered . It sounded like an engineer . It was the sort of voice that 's not used to the telephone and too busy to learn . " I 'm looking for a singer named Danny , " I said . " He likes to work in sweaters . He might do some song writing , too . Do you know where I could find him ? " The voice mentioned another studio and cut me off . The snap of the broken connection made my head hurt again . I wondered if I was losing my charm . The studio was listed in the book , so I drove out there with all the windows down , wishing I had a convertible . A Duesenberg , maybe , with a straight eight , low and lean like a hungry jungle cat . You could smell the orange blossoms all over California , even through the haze of downtown LA . There was some muscle inside the front door who wanted credentials , so I let him look at my press card . " Okey , wordsmith , " he said , " in there , " and pointed out a glass walled room . It was Studio A all over again . The three kids were sitting around an almost identical microphone , blowing around identical smoke . " One of you named Danny ? " I asked , and since I had it out I went ahead and showed my paper around again . " Sure , " one of them said . " What 's this all about ? " " I 'd just like to talk to you for a second . Background stuff . " " Didn 't I see you over at Cooper 's yesterday ? " " That 's right . " We went outside . The kid hadn 't liked the idea of me and Cooper in one mouthful . Something had him spooked , deep down where he wasn 't even able to see it himself . " Who 's Rico ? " I said , and then , because he didn 't seem to like to hear that from me either , I added , " and what 's he got on you ? " " You got it wrong , scribbler , " he said , and his blonde hair shone in the spring sunshine . He was cute and wholesome , and I was sure teenage girls everywhere had his picture on the wall . " I just keep my nose clean , let Rico change some of the words of my songs around , and get paid good for it . " He had a habit of talking with his head down , maybe so I could see his hair cut better . He was loveable as a chipmunk . " What kind of changes ? " " Just a few words , maybe a whole verse to make the changes fit . " " Give me examples . " " Well , addresses . There 's some street name , or some particular place always in the songs . I 've got to where if I write a song for him , I just make it easy for him , leave a hole where an address can go . " " Why does he do it ? " " It 's none of my business mister . Maybe he 's with the Chamber of Commerce ? " I told the kid I didn 't think so . When I drove off , he seemed to have forgotten me completely , staring into the morning , humming and tapping a foot . I went to my office and took the phone off the hook . I was not in the mood for any more phone calls . Then I turned off the buzzer that let me know if anyone had come into my waiting room . They could wait . That was what the room was for . I spent all afternoon finishing up the story and taking aspirins . About seven o ' clock I took the finished manuscript over to my agent 's house and put it through the door slot . I didn 't want to talk to him , either . On the way home , I remembered the radio show the drummer had told me about . I put the radio on as soon as I got there and listened while I hung up my hat . It was the Pick Hit Show for April 20 , and they had only got up to number 21 . I sat by the radio and waited . The announcer 's voice was smooth as Castor Oil and itVentura Boulevard on a Saturday morning is no more crowded than , say , the aisles of a burning theatre , no more hectic than a buffalo stampede . It took me less than two hours to find what I was looking for , but not much less . There were plenty of arches , but only one that made sense in terms of the story line . A couple of times I asked myself what I was doing . The story was written , my agent was doubtlessly taking it around that morning . It was like playing hopscotch in a mine field for me to keep nosing around . Sooner or later I was bound to get really hurt . Then I saw a huge brick arch on a church , and a newspaper kiosk right under it . I even found a parking place where I could see it from my car . I watched it for half an hour . A lot of people came up to it , many of them whistling . The whistlers seemed to stay longer , and left with parcels wrapped in brown paper . After I felt I had the routine down , I got out and stopped one of the boys with a parcel . " Say , friend , " I said , " that was a catchy tune you were whistling . I heard that on the radio last night . How does it go again ? " I slipped him a wink for good measure . He hummed it for me , an expression of bored tolerance on his face . He was the executive type , a little overweight , a little glossy from years of disuse . A few people looked at us funny , but they were poor and I don 't think he even noticed them . He didn 't seem to like me too well either , but he may have sympathized with my problem . The tune was just not very memorable . I decided I had it down , and whistled through the chorus with him . Then I walked up to the kiosk , whistling like a late night express through east LA . I let go with another wink . I was spending them heavily , but I had plenty more where those had come from . The boy behind the counter handed me a typewritten list . I looked for the manuscript I 'd seen in the studio , but apparently it wasn 't out yet . " Order by number , " he said , toneless with boredom . He reminded me of the kid that Greer had brought over to play Scrabble with me . I didn 't holI got Mrs . Cooper 's address out of the phone book and drove south to her place in Beverly Hills . A liveried butler answered the door and handed me a look that made me wish I 'd put on a better suit . " Is Mr . Cooper home ? " " He 's out , sir . May I take a message ? " The butler could have been lying , but I believed him . There was a Pierce - Arrow in the driveway , and that kind of money meant that another car was out driving around somewhere . I hoped it was the husband 's , and that he was in it . " Tell Mrs . Cooper I 'd like to see her . It 's about her husband . " I handed him a card . I waited outside and watched a cardinal drive away a blue jay twice his size . The jay had a voice that reminded me of Greer . It was the kind of scene that could cheer me up , even if I did feel like the underside of a streetcar . The butler came back and let me in . The house was one of those two story showplaces that never seems to look lived in , even when they 're not spotless , which this one was . If I had dropped a newspaper on the floor it would have looked like an interior decorator planned it there . It was that kind of a house . Mrs . Cooper came down the stairs . She looked as remote and untouchable as the house . Her eyes had developed the green they had promised at the recording studio , turning deep and dark as fine jade . Her hair blended into the richness of the mahogany paneling . The studio may have been her husband 's , but she was mistress of the house . I knew it , she knew it , even the house knew it . I followed her into a study , and she closed the double doors behind us . I sat down and dropped my hat at my feet . " Drink ? " she said . I nodded and heard Scotch tinkle into a glass . It wasn 't hard to tell it just by the sound . Scotch is the only thing that people like Mrs . Cooper drink . Very , very old Scotch . " Let 's not fool around , " I said . " Why did you call me last Thursday ? " " I told you , for the magazine . . . " I set my drink on the desk and picked up my hat . " I 'm sorry , I thought maybe your time might be valuable . I thought you might not want to waste any more of it . I see I was wrong . " " Sit down , Mr . Chandler . " She sat behind the desk and stared at me for a minute . I put my hat back on the floor . I don 't know what she was looking for , but I don 't think she found it . STop | Home |
Today has been a busy day . I over scheduled myself this week , and Daughter 's drama didn 't help . I had a meeting an hour away from here this morning . I dropped Daughter at Daycare ( which of course was in the wrong direction , meaning it took much more than an hour ) and headed to the meeting . I talked to Case Manager about the plans for Monday and my attorney about my will and such on the drive . After the meeting I had a delightful lunch with 3 friends . I got back to Town at 2 : 30 , and visited two nursing homes ( 5 people ) . I dealt with phone calls from Daughter and from the supervisor at the gift shop . She 's excited about Daughter coming , and it sounds like the perfect situation for Daughter . Never more than 9 people , quiet and laid back . . I got home and had to print out the wedding service for a rehearsal this evening . My computer has become more erratic with each passing day , but tonight it out did itself . A portion of the service was in Chinese . I didn 't even know my computer spoke Chinese . I did convince it to give me an English version . After the rehearsal , Daughter and I came home and just sat for a few minutes , then we cleaned out the car and ate supper . I have to leave at 7 : 30 tomorrow for a seminar an hour from here . I 'm taking three of the saints with me , so I decided we 'd best make room for them to sit in the car . We 'll leave a little early so I can be back by 3 : 30 for the wedding at 4 : 30 . . Daughter and I had a quiet , cooperative evening . She told me how much she 'd miss me tomorrow . They are going to go out to eat and to a movie and shopping . She 'll have fun . I hope Daughter will do a little cleaning in the morning . The change in her is amazing . I 'm grateful , because the schedule I have this weekend would have been much more challenging if she had continued to run away and be oppositional . I will enjoy her calm for however long it lasts . Posted by When we saw Psychiatrist this week , I was hoping for a med change to make life easier . She told me ( again ) that she didn 't think this was a medication issue , but a developmental issue and the way someone with poor coping skills handles extreme stress . Not what I wanted to hear . But , I have to say , she knows her stuff , and I 'm grateful we found her . Therapist tried to refer someone to her this week , and she 's not taking new patients . . Anyway , Daughter was completely different after hearing she 'd be starting at the gift shop on Monday . She is happy , cooperative , and she didn 't wet the bed last night . Today she 's going to daycare . I have a meeting and nursing home visits . Therapist is going to see her at the daycare center . She 'll think I was hallucinating the behaviors when she talks to Daughter today . . I hope Daughter will remain happy for an extended period of time . It would make my life so much easier . Posted by So yesterday evening I was getting phone calls from people telling me that Daughter was on the highway headed to town . This evening , I received a phone call from an elderly woman here in town . She was feeling funny , could I come over ? So Daughter and I got in the car and went to visit her . Daughter is always cooperative in these situations . Always . It really is amazing . . V 's family is trying to get her to move . She 's in her mid 90 's , and lives alone . Her daughter , who lived near her , has died . Anyway , V was concerned - - she 'd taken her nitro , but didn 't know what to do . So , we sat and talked . We shared stories and memories . She was wondering if maybe she shouldn 't live alone anymore . I pointed out she 'd handled this situation perfectly . She knew the woman who most often helps her was going to be gone this evening . She tried to call a nurse in the congregation , but didn 't get an answer . So , she called me . " You said I could call you anytime . " . We had a delightful visit . She decided she was going to be okay . Daughter and I came home . Daughter is so much better now that she knows she 'll be back in a routine and going to the gift shop daily . I feel better able to cope with the busy days that are ahead now that she is on a more even keel . I hope it continues . Posted by I received a call from Flasher 's Mom this afternoon . She had just gotten the letter I wrote , and was calling to apologize . She had no idea it was so bad . She 's pulling Flasher out of the workshop . He will be starting back with a job in an enclave soon , and she said he can stay home alone , so she 'll pull him out now so Daughter can attend . . To say I am amazed would be an understatement . I happened to be talking to Case Manager when Flasher 's Mom called . I called CM back , and Daughter will start Monday . She will go to the gift shop for a while . I am not confident that there won 't still be lots of drama at the workshop , so I told her that after she gets stronger , we 'll discuss a return to the workshop . For now , she 'll be at the gift shop . . My life just got much easier . I am grateful . I knew God was good . Posted by Remember Nice Guy ? He was the man Daughter was dating for a while . It finally ended because he was pushing for marriage and Daughter couldn 't handle it . His Mom is the Respite Worker coming to take Daughter Saturday while I go to a seminar . I 've talked to her at Special Olympic events and like her . She called and I talked to her on the phone . She 's pulled Nice Guy out of the workshop because of all the drama . . Some other tidbits from our conversation : Daughter called Nice Guy last week and told him I 'd kicked her out of the house . Daughter gives Flasher mixed messages , and often has to be right next to him . . I went online last night and ordered 3 skeleton keys , in the hope that one will work on my bedroom door . It would be nice if one worked on the guest room door , too . I hate having to keep everything locked up . I hate having alarms on the pantry doors . I hate having to keep her close to me at all times . . She was up in the middle of the night complaining that her blood sugar was dropping . I came downstairs to get her a snack , because I couldn 't trust her to come down unsupervised . From her blood sugar this morning , though , it looks like she did come down at some point . She gave me a note this morning telling me she needs to go to the hospital . I 've told her she can 't run away to the hospital . She 's not happy about that . She woke me up around 2 : 00 , and around 5 : 00 I woke up with a severe cramp in my leg . I 've heard people complain of leg cramps , but it 's the first time I 've experienced one . I had a banana for breakfast , and hope I won 't go through that again . . Anyway , I 'm tired this afternoon . It 's a combination of emotional exhaustion from dealing with Daughter and physical exhaustion from lack of sleep . I 'm also in the process of reviewing my will , living trust , and special needs trust documents that I 've had prepared for me . I found out that both of my sisters are afraid to have Daughter in their homes overnight . I guess I can understand , but I also grieve as I think about what she is losing . I had hoped to goReverend Mom Daughter claimed last night that she 's hearing voices again , and told me I was lucky because they were telling her to beat me with our big flashlight . Do I believe her ? No . I think she was feeling very guilty , and her guilt generally comes out as anger and a desire to run away . She was quite dramatic , though , and very defiant . She brought the Love You Forever book from her room and stood in front of me and tore it apart and put it in the waste basket . . I didn 't help much by seeking to increase her guilt . I informed her she was stomping on my heart , and if she 'd like , I 'd take it out to make it easier for her to stomp some more . The most frustrating part of all of this for me is that she showed me in every way she could that she can not be left unsupervised at all . I had made the mistake of sending her back over to the house to get a couple of things for the senior luncheon . . She also showed that she 's not ready to be anywhere near any of the workshop crowd . This week I am only taking her to daycare 2 days . Next week it will be at least 3 days . I don 't care how much it costs , my sanity is worth more . Posted by So as I waited for Daughter to come home , my phone began ringing . " I just saw Daughter walking along the highway toward Town . It looked like she had a cell phone . " " I don 't want to be a busy body , but Daughter just walked past my house talking on a cell phone . " She found the cell phone I had hidden in my bedroom . By the time I went to get her , she 'd been gone 30 minutes and walked 1 . 5 miles . She wasn 't prepared with food in case of a low , so I went and picked her up . Initially she refused to get in the car . I 'm sure that by now all of Tiny Village knows Daughter ran away , as several more people drove by as I was trying to convince her to get in the car . . She had no money ( I checked - - thinking she might have stolen money from my purse again . ) Her plan was to go stay in a park . She wanted to see Flasher . She 's not safe here , and of course Flasher will keep her safe . . I knew I was in trouble when I saw the moon last night . We had a concert . I asked her to give me an early Mother 's Day present and not try to convince me she had to leave during intermission . So she tried to convince me she was too sick to stay before the concert even began . It was a wonderful concert , and as we were driving home , I was looking at the moon , fearing that there would be challenges ahead . I was right . Posted by Over the last few weeks , Daughter was having some low blood sugars , so I reduced her insulin . We had a couple of days of good blood sugars , but then she mysteriously began running slightly high . I questioned my calculations of carbs . I tried adjusting her before meal insulin . I had decided that tonight I was going to have to increase the long acting insulin , and worried about what I had done wrong , and where I had made my mistake . I pondered the possibility that I was giving her too much insulin at bedtime , and the highs were the result of a low and then a rebound . . When we got home from the senior luncheon , I asked her to take care of her linens in the washing machine . She glared at me for a while and then retreated to her bedroom to pout . Finally , she came downstairs and said , " I feel so stupid . " . " Then go take care of your linens so I can put some other laundry in . " She ignored my suggestions and sat in my study glaring at me . . I could feel my blood pressure rising , so I went out into the kitchen and began straightening things up . I announced that if she didn 't take care of her linens , I 'd move them to a laundry basket and leave them there , wet , so I could do other laundry . She ignored me . I put them in the laundry basket and started a load of clothes . I went back into the kitchen , and discovered that a number of the juice boxes we have on hand to treat low blood sugars were missing . I ordered her to go get them . Several times . . She finally stormed upstairs and slammed her bedroom door . I followed with a bag . She heard me coming and was coming out of her room , arms full of juice boxes by the time I reached her bedroom . I told her I wanted the other food she had hidden up there . She stared , silent , for a minute and then announced there wasn 't any more . I went in and began searching . Of course there was more . . Once again I had been beating myself up for not managing her insulin properly , and she 's been sabotaging all my efforts . She informed me that I 'm the worse mom she 's ever seen and left . I don 't know where sReverend Mom Today was our monthly senior luncheon at the community building across the church parking lot . We had our largest crowd ever - - with 2 new people . They loved the egg stratas I had made . We also had muffins and fruit . Daughter asked to do the prayer before the meal , and did a good job with it . She also called bingo . I left early and went to visit one of the saints . . When we were both at home , she told me she thought we should go shopping this afternoon . I explained ( again ) that I have work to do . She doesn 't understand my work . She has no concept of money , and no ability to save . She received a belated birthday card and check yesterday . She immediately wanted to take me out to supper . She 's quite frustrated that she actually has some money and I won 't take her out to spend it immediately . I 've tried 40 million ways to help her understand , but 3 year old children aren 't capable of understanding , and this afternoon , she 's 3 . . She used up her resources for being responsible and productive today at the senior luncheon . It 's going to be a long afternoon and evening . If she can 't go to town and shop , all she wants to do is sleep . At least if she 's sleeping , she 's not bothering me . Posted by I took Daughter to see Therapist this evening . I asked her Adelaide 's question , and she told us she wanted to be 3 . She drew pictures . She came to me right before her 3rd birthday . She equates age 3 with safety , comfort , and not being able to hear . I knew that Flasher 's constant chatter was triggering her PTSD . . When she came to me , she had a severe hearing loss . She got a loaner hearing aide , and it was amazing watching her as she began to hear . When we got home that first day , I put in a video for her and went into the kitchen to cook supper . I realized it was too quiet , and went to see what she was doing . She was standing , staring at the TV , transfixed . This video had never held her attention . I realized it was the first time she had heard the narrator . By the time medicaid paid for her to get her own hearing aide , the loaner had gone bad and she had decided it was safe to hear . Her hearing was normal . The theory is that she had shut down to protect herself from the house of horrors . . That first year , I 'd pick her up from daycare and spend the evenings rocking her . At bedtime there would be a story , a prayer , and I 'd always sing her the song , Be Not Afraid . As I left her for the night , I would say , " You 're safe her and no one is going to hurt you . " The ritual had to be followed exactly every night . She had to have the door open . She was terrified of being shut in her bedroom . . So , I 'm going to sing Be not Afraid to her at bedtime each night . I 'll also read her the book I 'll Love You Forever . I will leave her bedroom door open until I go to bed . When I go to bed I 'll close it and set the alarm . She wants the alarm on to protect her from temptations . Maybe this will stop the nightmares and she 'll feel safe again . If she feels safe , hopefully she 'll stop wetting the bed . I 'm willing to try anything . Posted by This morning we were over at the church . Daughter straightened up the pews and ran the vacuum over muddy foot prints . She took some items to the post office . As long as she was working , she was fine , when she sat for any length of time , you could see her drooping and getting depressed . Now we 're home . I typed up the chore list for her and she sat and studied it for a while . . Our final community concert is this evening , and she has an appointment with Therapist at 5 : 00 . She wanted me to move it up . I told her she could wait until 5 : 00 . I pointed out that as long as she is working , she 's fine , so she needs to get to work . She told me she 's been dreaming about the workshop , and her friends are telling her to come back . We talked again about why she had to leave . She seems to think her friends created the drama so she would leave . I assured her that wasn 't the case . Today she says she 's through with Flasher . Tomorrow he may her one true love again . . She has chosen the jobs she 's going to do , and is putting music in the stereo to motivate her . She 's moving very slowly . I 've had a more productive day , and I 'm grateful . Now it 's back to work . Posted by This evening I had a second phone interview with a congregation . I think I 'm in love . I 'm really impressed by what they are telling me . Most of the congregations I talk to have a history of conflict ( that 's what happens when you list conflict management as a skill ) . I ask them how they 've healed and what they 've learned . Up until this committee , the answer was always : " The bad people have all left and we don 't have any problems any more . " This congregation talked about learning to recognize and focus on their strengths . They asked me lots of questions about how I handle theological diversity . They recognize that they still have challenges , and they are seeking a pastor who will lead them through that . . I asked them point blank how the congregation would react to Daughter . They said race wouldn 't be an issue , and that in terms of her challenges , they thought the congregation would embrace her . My paperwork says that I have a special needs young adult daughter , and that there would need to be opportunities for her and she would need to feel welcomed , too . Because they aren 't legally allowed to ask questions about my family , I always invite them to ask any questions they may have and tell them something of her background . This is the 4th church I thought might be the ONE . I hate to get my hopes up too high . I know that God will provide the right place at the right time . Yet I really hope this is the right place and the right time . Posted by So today I finally sat down and developed a job list . There are certain jobs Daughter is expected to do as a member of the family : keep her bedroom clean , take care of her cat and one other chore , today 's is taking out the trash . Then there is a list of other jobs that need to be done around the house . They are broken down by room and task , and there is a price attached to each . If she does the task properly the first time , she gets the full amount . If she has to redo it once , she gets 50 % of it , and if it still isn 't right , she doesn 't get anything . She read over the list as we drove to see Psychiatrist , and thought it was good . When we got home and she looked again , she came and told me she was overwhelmed . I explained it again . She decided that tonight she 's just going to do the daily tasks . She 'll work on the jobs that earn her money the days she 's home all day . . Psychiatrist told Daughter she needs to decide if she wants to grow up or not . She also needs to dump Flasher . She told me that she doesn 't think she 's cycling , she thinks this is the developmental conflict . There is no medication for it . I asked if there was medication for the mom . She just smiled . She did think pulling her out of the workshop was good . . We waited over an hour for Psychiatrist . They announced she had an emergency and we could reschedule , but it takes us an hour to get there , so I decided I 'd rather wait . I seem to have picked up an intestinal bug someplace . I didn 't get much sleep last night , and today has had its challenges , but I 'm managing . Hopefully I will get a good night 's sleep tonight and tomorrow will be a better day . This is a full week , so I need to be productive every day . Posted by Worship , Congregational Meeting , Sunday School , Birthday Open House , Bank , Nursing Home , Store for balloons for youth group . I got home in time to do research on abusive relationships in teenagers for the youth group program . Youth group - - make your own pizzas , program , and balloons tied around the ankles to be popped . We went from abusive relationships into the pressure to be sexually active - - they brought it up , which amazed me . We had 9 boys , Daughter , and 1 girl who is pretty much nonverbal . We had a really good discussion . I was honored by the trust those guys place in me and their willingness to be open . They had a blast with the game and want to do it again . While driving between places I finally found an organist for Saturday 's wedding . I 'm home now and for some reason I 'm exhausted - - it was over 10 hours of activity today . Of course , I haven 't slept well the past two nights because I 've been worrying about tracking down an organist for the wedding . Now that I have one , I should sleep well tonight . Posted by Daughter has managed to turn things around today . Knowing that she needs quick rewards , I told her that if she did her chores we 'd go to City and eat at her favorite Italian chain and go to the warehouse store . The car is always a good place for conversations . She talked about how she had turned things around , and I praised her and asked her where she was with Flasher . She was conflicted . I tried a different approach : . " I know you want to be married . I understand that . I have a question for you . Can you ride a bike before you learn to walk ? " . " No . " . " Can you read a book before you know the alphabet ? " . " No . " . " Can you multiply and divide before you know how to add and subtract ? " . " No . " . I think she thought I was pretty dense by this time . " What are the things you need to be able to do before you get married ? " . She began to list them . I suggested she write a list when we got home so she could begin working on them . One of the things she said , which I had to work hard not to laugh at , was , " You can 't wet the bed because that isn 't comfortable for your opponent . " I told Daughter yesterday afternoon that I hoped she was going to do her share around here , but I wasn 't going to assign her specific chores because I didn 't want her to start arguing with me . So , she came home yesterday and wrote down a list of things she was going to do around the house , not just to earn money , but because she wanted to share the work , or so she said . I looked over the list and told her I thought it was a bit more than she could handle , but that I was glad she wanted to work and to go ahead and get started . I was busy doing laundry . She went upstairs with a bag , I suspect to clean out the litter box , and then came back downstairs and sat down and watched me sort and fold the whites . I told her if she wasn 't going to work , she needed to go to her room , she wasn 't going to sit around watching me work ( which just causes my blood pressure to go up and results in me eventually saying unhelpful things ) . . When I went upstairs a little bit later to put some of her clothes away , she was in her room with a stack of DVD 's watching her portable DVD player . I took the DVD player away . If you aren 't going to help , you aren 't going to have access to electronics . I was called names and told that I had no right to keep her from the one true love of her life . She came downstairs and demanded her cell phone , telling me I had no right to keep it from her . I explained to her that she didn 't have to work , but if she didn 't work , she wasn 't going to have access to things like cell phones and DVD players , as they cost money , and when you don 't work , you don 't have money . She threatened to call the police . I said that was fine . She disappeared upstairs with the land line and the phone book . . When she came back downstairs she 'd changed her clothes . She was wearing stretch pants and a camisole . She headed out the front door . I asked where she was going , and she announced she was going to Town . I asked how she was going to get there , fearful that she had found someone willing to come pick her up , and she announced that sheReverend Mom Time to kick myself out of this funk and focus on the positive . I have been reflecting on God 's hand in the midst of all of this . Removing Daughter from the toxic environment at the workshop should work to stabilize her and make it easier on her when we do move . It is also removing her from daily contact with her friends , so she will miss them less . If we go someplace where we have to wait for services , we will already be experienced in figuring out alternatives . My hope is that all of this will make the move easier when it comes . . Holy Week I interviewed with two churches . I really liked the one , which was about an hour from my closest friend and within 90 minutes of Sister and Brother . I was concerned because I didn 't have experience in one area they were seeking . I told them that , and expressed a willingness to take a class to learn ( it was technology related ) . They asked me for a sermon CD , which I provided . Yesterday Daughter was telling me she needed a trip to visit family . She wanted to see Sister and Short Niece . I was thinking that it was too bad I hadn 't heard from that church , because I could drop Daughter off with them if I were to go to an interview . Within an hour , they called me . I have a second phone interview with them Monday night . . This one could fall through , too . I know , though , that God is at work in our lives and I will receive the right call at the right time . Posted by Nurse just called from the Adult Daycare Center . She was ready to call the squad because Daughter had gone out on them . She was sure her blood sugar had crashed . I assured her Daughter was conning her . She was convinced it was real . I told her to check her blood sugar , and if it was low , she could call the squad . She called back , " I guess you know your daughter . " I told her to just ignore her . They used a wheel chair to move her to a recliner so she could rest . . Today I 'm frustrated . I am having a hard time finding an organist for a wedding I have May 1st . I 've been so distracted , I put it off too long . I 'm frustrated by the lack of resources in this area . I 'm wondering if she will ever be able to go back to the workshop , and how long I continue to spend lots of money to provide her care . After all , I 'm cheap . I 'm frustrated because consequences don 't motivate her , and I can 't figure out what does . I 'm tired of the lying . I 'm tired of the extra laundry . I 'm tired of having to keep things locked up . She managed to sneak more food upstairs this week . . Yesterday I could see God 's hand at work in this , and I still do today . But that doesn 't mean that this isn 't stressful and I 'm not tired . I 'm going to write about where I see God 's hand , but not right now . Right now I 'm going to feel sorry for myself . I 'll get over it . Posted by I talked to Case Manager this morning . There was another Day Hab program that was a possibility . I asked her to get a guarantee that they would accept Daughter before we went further with it . Both Case Manager and I suspect that the one we visited Monday was spooked when they read Daughter 's plan and saw her emotional and health challenges . . I told Daughter there were two possibilities . Initially she was quite excited about the possibility of the gift shop , she started talking about who was there and what they did . Suddenly her face fell . " I 'd be at the workshop for a while every day . " That is the major red flag I see in this plan . Therapist and I discussed it . I don 't think Daughter is strong enough to resist the temptation right now . . The second Day Hab program wouldn 't come this far , so the gift shop and the day care center are the two options I have right now . I 'm going to take it week by week , but I 'm keeping her at the adult day care center for now . She told me tonight that she wants Flasher back . It confirms my sense that she can 't handle being there even for 30 minutes a day right now . . Some of the people who have been creating the drama may be leaving the workshop soon . But if the drama has become part of the culture , other people will step up to continue the drama . . I 'm tired . It 's been an exhausting week . Tuesday night Daughter fed Kitten , and spilled cat food all over the floor . I asked her to sweep it up . Last night I noticed she hadn 't done it . I asked her to sweep it up . Tonight it was still there . She refused to sweep it up , so I just did . She refused to do any work tonight , but wants me to take her shopping for new clothes . I think all the stress is getting to both of us . It took me 5 minutes to figure out where the keys were to the lock box with the insulin in it . She makes so much extra work for me , and tonight I 'm resenting it . . She had a good day at the adult day care center today , and it 's taking over an hour out of my day to transport her to it . Now some days I can combine it with other triPosted by I am known for my frugality - - some might say cheapness , but I prefer frugality . My sisters have more money , and are less frugal . They occasionally get frustrated with what they see as my cheapness . I was talking to Far Away Sister today as I walked into super discount store . ( Neither of my sisters will shop at super discount store . ) I had decided it was time to buy a new half slip . The elastic was giving out in my favorite half slip , which I inherited from Grandma . Grandma died 12 years ago . . This afternoon I ended up on a three way call with Sister and Far Away Sister . " Hey , Sister , Reverend Mom splurged today . Tell her how you treated yourself . " . It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about , but then I remembered . " Oh , I went to super discount store and bought a new half slip to replace the one I inherited from Grandma . " . Sister was silent . Sister is never silent . " I shocked Sister into silence ! " Far Away Sister and I thought it was hilarious . It took Sister a while to recover , but she finally told me that was good that I had treated myself in that way . I need to remember this day as the day I left Sister speechless - - probably for the first and last time . Posted by Things were going too well . Daughter called about lunch time , down and wanting me to come get her . She claimed she was having flashbacks . She does know the lingo . I gave her some suggestions , and talked to Nurse , who claimed responsibility for the problem - - Daughter had eaten her meal before everyone else because she wanted to check her blood sugar early and then said she might as well eat . She was done eating when the others got her food , which wasn 't much fun . Nurse assured me that tomorrow they 'd handle it differently . . I didn 't get to the hospital as early as I would have liked , but I did get over there before his surgery , and had a nice visit with him and his family . Case Manager called while I was with the family . The Day Hab program has determined that they can 't provide transportation for Daughter , which means she won 't be going to the Day Hab program . Case Manager went to bat for us , and got the powers that be to say that Daughter can go to the gift shop . Actually , it 's not a gift shop now , but until recently the workshop had a gift shop there . Now , it is an activity site for clients who don 't want to work . Daughter 's old supervisor ( the one who told her to stop it and put an end to her psychogenic nonepileptic seizures at the workshop ) is running the program , and initially they said she couldn 't go because there was only one person there and they couldn 't handle her diabetic needs . CM has convinced him that they can and should . . I didn 't have time to go through all the details with CM , and she was gone by the time I left the hospital . However , Daughter would be able to go 5 days a week , and the bus would pick her up . She would have to wait briefly in the workshop lobby , so I need to think this through . I 'm hoping this is a good thing . Flasher didn 't call this morning , so hopefully he 's moving on . CM also told me that some of the problems may be solved when some people return to community employment in the future . . I told Special Olympics Coordinator ( SOC ) that I was pulling Daughter out Special Olympics Posted by This is turning into a very busy week . I 'm grateful Daughter is doing so well . I dropped her off at daycare this morning . She was a little nervous , but overall happy and chipper . . She did really well yesterday . It was a long day , and she was very patient and didn 't complain as she entertained herself through an afternoon of visits and an evening of commitments at the church . I had today all planned out - - I was going to get the newsletter done and then go pick up Daughter and take her to the Special Olympics fundraising supper . . I got a call this morning . The man who collapsed in church Sunday is having heart surgery this afternoon - - at the hospital that is over an hour away . He 'd like me to be there , so I 'll be there . I tried to visit him in the hospital yesterday , but his wife wouldn 't allow him in the directory . She was trying to keep some people from finding him . The fact that she wants me at the hospital this afternoon means I really do have to be there . I probably won 't be able to stay until it 's done , but I will definitely be there to pray with him before he goes in . I have to pick up Daughter by 5 : 00 . Fortunately , this hospital is in the same direction as the daycare center . . Daughter wrote Flasher a letter yesterday telling him it 's over and to leave her alone . He 'd left another voice mail yesterday morning . Just the sound of his voice sets her off . I 'm a little bit concerned , but she has decided that she needs to hand him the letter personally . She says it 's her responsibility . She 's right , but I worry about the way hearing his voice affects her . Hopefully she can give it to him tonight , and that chapter of her life will be over . I still have custody of her cell phone . . Now I need to get over to the church . I have less than 3 hours to finish the newsletter . . . . Daughter entertained herself in the church office for 3 hours last night while I was involved with other things . We didn 't get home until after her bedtime , and she had a mini - meltdown . She informed me she was going to call the workshop and inform them she needed to be picked up today . When she had cooled off a little we talked , and I offered reassurance that everything would be okay . I pointed out that she hadn 't felt safe for sometime , and while the new arrangements might not be perfect , they would definitely help her feel safe . . This morning when she came downstairs , she was singing . She came into the living room and sang , " Good morning to you . " She had made her own lyrics up to fit her mood and the day . It was wonderful to see her so happy . We spent the morning over at the church . She took some things to the post office to be mailed , and spent the rest of the time working on an art project for Therapist . The project shows her progress in getting out of the Deep , Dark Hole . She didn 't interrupt or demand attention until 11 : 45 , when she announced that her blood sugar was dropping . So , we came home and ate lunch . . She knows that I have to make some visits this afternoon , and is packing her purse with things she can use to entertain herself . I am amazed at the change in her . When I talked to Therapist to set up an appointment for Daughter , I expressed regret that I hadn 't recognized what was going on and taken action earlier . Therapist told me not to go down that road . As I think about it , it would have been difficult to do anything earlier , for a variety of reasons . This is happening at the right time . I really do see God 's hand in this , and I am grateful . Posted by Daughter and I went to visit the Day Hab site this afternoon . Case Manager was also there . It will take some work to get all the paper work in order , but the plan is for Daughter to attend their 3 - 4 days a week . There is one day they are full , and another day that is questionable . They also have to figure out the bus route . The place is 25 miles from here , and they haven 't come this far north before . I view time on the bus as bonus time that I don 't have to deal with her . The day hab program won 't cost me anything . She is excited and scared . She alternates between playful and down and scared . Part of the time she was pointing out things they had , part of the time she was sitting on the floor wrapped around my leg . I liked the people , and while I think Daughter will be one of the highest functioning , that 's okay for right now . . She will go to the adult day care Wednesday - Friday this week , and at least 2 days a week until she starts the day hab program . Then she may attend one day a week . I 'm tired , but relieved that we 've come up with a workable plan . . I wrote a letter to Flasher 's mom . Case Manager is going to address and mail it ( she can 't give me the address because of confidentiality issues and I don 't know mom 's last name ) . She thought it was a good letter . She also listened to the voice mails so she can confirm what Flasher said . I 'm going to pull Daughter out of Special Olympics for right now . I hate to do it , but it became obvious yesterday that there is no good level of contact with him . . Daughter has lost the ability to earn money at the workshop , so I 've suggested she stay at home on Thursdays and I will give her jobs she can do around the house to earn money . I have to develop a job list and how much I 'll pay her for each . We 're going to make this work . As Far Away Sister said , Daughter has learned there are always options , and she 's not trapped . That 's a good thing for her to know . Posted by I am now in possession of Daughter 's cell phone . Flasher called and left her two voice mails this morning . He is sorry about his mom , he still loves , he wants their relationship to continue , and he provided instructions for how to contact him without either of the evil moms knowing about it . Daughter admitted that she had had a friend send him text messages on her behalf . I had text messaging blocked on her phone after she subscribed to several premium services . . She still loves him , and is determined to continue the relationship . Sigh . We visited the adult daycare center this morning . She liked it . It will work out , though it will be expensive . This afternoon we go to the day hab program south of here . That wouldn 't cost money . I suspect we will end up using a combination of the two . Case Manager may come to the day hab program this afternoon . . I am going to write Flasher 's mom a letter . I need to cool down a bit before I write it , but I am going to ask that she not talk to Daughter again , but come to me with concerns . I am going to point out all the times I haven 't called the cops about her son , and suggest that maybe she needs to concern herself with his activities more than Daughter 's . I am seriously considering pulling Daughter out of any Special Olympic sports that he is doing . . Daughter 's sense of humor is returning , and when she hasn 't been berating me for trying to prevent her from seeing her True Love , she 's been playful this morning . My hope is that once her days are filled with other things she will be able to set Flasher aside . I hope . Posted by Today has been a challenging day . After several days of summer , winter returned yesterday . Unfortunately , our furnace had already gone on summer vacation . It was not easy to drag myself out of bed this morning . This was one of those mornings when everyone wanted a peace of me . A man who has some health problems and hadn 't been in church for a while was there this morning . His son brought him . It was good to see him . The special music this morning was beautiful , and it moved Daughters to tears . I saw her leave worship . The woman she was sitting with indicated she was crying . . As I was beginning the time with the children , the man had an attack of some kind . The nurses of the congregation converged on him , and someone got the AED while someone else called 911 . I prayed for him , then returned to the children and tied the excitement into my conversation with them about the power of God 's love . . You have heard me say before that Tiny Village is very isolated . Our fire protection comes from a volunteer department 10 miles away . It takes them at least 15 minutes to get to us . We sang a hymn , and I went to check out the situation . I preached a sermon and called for the offering , and went and checked on the man . His color had improved , and he was responsive . The squad finally arrived . I wasn 't timing them , but a board member said it was 30 minutes . I asked the congregation to remain in their seats until after the medics had gotten the man to the ambulance . They were very obedient . . After a few more conversations about difficult situations , I came home , thanked the trustees who had called the furnace back to duty , and changed clothes . I dragged Daughter with me to the hospital , where I checked on the man . They were thinking he 'd had another small stroke or heart attack . He was doing well . I stood there talking to him in the ER and thinking of all the times I had done this with Dad . In that moment , he reminded me of Dad . . I took Daughter to lunch , and ran into some members . We had a conversation about their mom , who they justReverend Mom I let Daughter sleep as long as she wanted this morning . It was noon before she rolled out of bed . She was dry ! C came over and we put Daughter 's bed back together and put her dresser back in her room . I washed all the linens again with deodorizer . Even washing the daily , they still had the urine smell . Her room is now fresh . She was very pleased to have her room back to something a bit more normal . I haven 't put her desk or nightstand in yet , but they will come as she shows she can handle things . . She has had several moments of anxiety and anger today . Change is hard . She 's going miss her friends . She should be able to stay at the workshop . Her friends think I 'm evil . Each time we 've talked things through , and she 's acknowledged that this is what is best for her . She knows this is the best thing for her , but both of us are anxious as we figure out how we 're going to manage without the workshop . . When she gets through the anger , she 's been happy and cooperative today . Her sens of humor is returning . Her playful nature is back . I 'd forgotten how charming she could be . I 'd forgotten what it was like to enjoy spending time with her . I 'm grateful . Posted by I knew that some point it would hit Daughter that she was leaving her friends and familiar routine . One of the reasons I decided to celebrate adoption day yesterday evening was to distract her . It worked , at least for the most part . She came home and slept ( avoidance ) . She loved the show , but was sobbing during the intermission ( which is pretty much how she handles all shows ) . She came home and complained of being in terrible physical pain . At one point she was doubled over on the floor because she was in so much pain . Having been conned far too many times , I offered her ibuprofen , which she declined , and pretty much ignored the dramatics . . Change is always hard for her , and this is a pretty major change . I 'll admit , I 'm a bit concerned about how it will all work out , too . I remain confident , though , that this is the right choice . We had a discussion about where we wold go to eat last night . She wanted a restaurant I 'd eaten in twice this past week ( once with her ) . I wanted a different place . Since I was driving and paying . . . . . " Fine . I see this is an argument I 'm not going to win . " . " You should be thanking me . Thank you , Mom , for taking me out to eat . Thank you , Mom , for adopting me . Thank you , Mom , for keeping me even when I 'm being a turkey . " . " Gobble . Gobble . " . I chuckled , which prompted her to giggle and say , " Happy Thanksgiving ! " . I 'm hoping that with this change , I 'll see more of her humor . That 's my hope and prayer as we enter into a challenging week . . . . I went to the adult day care center today . While I was there , Daughter called me . She was sobbing . She wanted me to come get her right away . She needed to clean out her locker and leave forever . Someone wouldn 't leave her alone . As I listened , what I heard was that she couldn 't handle being in a place she knew she was leaving . So , I went and picked her up early . She cleaned out her locker and I got all her diabetes supplies from the clinic . She freaked the staff out by telling them she was not coming back . She was very happy and chipper about leaving . I 'm a little shell - shocked . . The waiver won 't help with the daycare . There is a day habilitation program about 25 miles south of here that the waiver would help cover . Monday morning we 're going back to the adult day care center so I can meet with the nurse . The plan is to start her on Wednesday . It will cost me almost $ 50 a day . Monday afternoon we 'll go check out the day habilitation program . It sounds like their " members " are much lower functioning than Daughter . They work on life skills - - like meal planning , cooking , and cleaning . They have 4 - 11 members there on any given day . They do lots of activities in the community . . Tonight we 're going out to eat and then to a musical that Town high school is doing . Therapist 's daughter has the lead role in it . Tomorrow will be the 15th anniversary of Daughter 's adoption , so that is the reason for our celebration . We have some kind of celebration every year . Daughter is the one who keeps track , I never seem to think about adoption day , but she does . It 's very important to her . I 'm glad she sees it as something to celebrate . . Case Manager was amazed at how happy Daughter was to be leaving the workshop . We hope that means it will be a healing move for her . I want to get her back to where she was 3 years ago . I want to see her moving forward , not backwards . Posted by In a little while I will be heading to Town to begin the enrollment process for the adult daycare center . The good news is that there is another young woman Daughter knows who attends 3 days a week ( and the days I was thinking about enrolling Daughter ) . The better news is that her waiver may cover all ( or some ) of the cost . . Some of the things I heard last night : Pregnant Best Friend has been pressuring Daughter to get married and pregnant because , as Daughter puts it , " It 's a wonderful feeling to have your feet swell up and have to sit with your feet elevated and not be able to do anything . " I think she was being sarcastic . Flasher has an engagement ring he intends to bring to Daughter ( not sure how reliable he is ) . Flasher is on probation for assault . Daughter knows she wouldn 't be safe with Flasher , but thinks he has lots of money . There are lots of interpersonal conflicts that Daughter gets drawn into , and she often feels the need to protect her friends from verbal abuse . Now this morning , Daughter called me , sobbing , from the bus . She 's afraid and not sure she wants to make this change . This was more in line with what I expected from her . She has a very difficult time with change , and I was amazed by how happy she was last night . Her happiness about the possibility was really what convinced me that it was the right move . This won 't be easy , but I think it is a very important thing to do for Daughter 's emotional well being . Three years ago she was doing so well that we ( Therapist and I ) allowed her to make contact with her birth mother . She hasn 't done well since , and we 've always had some circumstance we could point to as the reason : contact with birth family , grandparents decline and death . She has adjusted to the reality that she can 't have contact with her birth family because it is such a powerful trigger for her PTSD . She has dealt with the death of her grandparents . The only stress left in her life is the workshop . I 'm hoping that in time this move will give me back the delightful Daughter I was enjoying 3 Reverend Mom This evening I made a difficult decision . I 'm pulling Daughter out of the workshop . I recently went back and reread some of my first posts here , and it made me aware of how much she has regressed . Sister pointed out a couple of months ago that it has been forever since Daughter was really stable for more than a week or two . My decision was confirmed when Daughter , after protesting for a bit , agreed that it was the right thing to do . I suspect that there are lots of triggers there for her PTSD . . Since I can 't leave her home alone and I can 't do all the things I need to do in ministry with her with me , I 'm going to see about enrolling her in the adult daycare center in town . I 'm sure it will be expensive , not only financially but also in terms of my time . It 's almost 12 miles to get there , so it will take about 90 minutes out of my day . My plan right now is to take her there on Wednesday and Friday . Tuesdays and Thursdays I 'm in the office . We can put her to work folding bulletins and such , and I can spend those afternoons on sermons and other office work . Wednesdays and Fridays will become the days I schedule pastoral care over a meal and most visits . . For visits that have to be made on Tuesdays and Thursdays , Daughter will wait in the car or in lobbies . She 's done it before . I will call tomorrow to see what I have to do to get her enrolled in the adult daycare center . I 'm sure there will be lots of forms and probably some doctor visits . I 'm not looking forward to the complications this will bring to my schedule , but if it makes evenings more pleasant , it will be worth it . Posted by This has been an interesting week in ministry . I have been entrusted this week with family secrets , which is always an honor . It 's hard , seeing the pain that is in so many families . They work so hard to hide that pain , to put on a good face . In the midst of hiding their own pain , they don 't see that other families are in just as much pain . The causes may be different , but the pain is just as difficult . Because I 've been so open about Daughter 's struggles ( I figure that the more people who know the truth , the more people there are to stop the wild rumors ) , people know that I can understand and empathize with their struggles . . So I hear the secrets . I carry the secrets . I grieve , and I pray . We live in a broken world , and there is a great deal of suffering in it . Hopefully by sharing the secrets , they lighten their loads just a little . Hopefully hearing that they are not alone and that I am not going to judge them enables them to stand a little taller . Often , though , I wish I could do more . . . . Posted by I thought Daughter was doing better , and she did seem to be better Monday and part of yesterday , but I had a couple over for counseling last night , which she saw as an excuse to return to old ways . She took a bag of unopened croutons up to her room and ate most of them . She slept on a comforter instead of sheets , meaning it will take at least two loads to wash her linens today . This morning she attempted to hide her cheese in the trash instead of eating it at breakfast . . Of course , in her eyes , I 'm the one who is causing all the problems . I 'm being mean . I 'm treating her poorly . I got called a choice name this morning . I shouldn 't have called her on behavior . I didn 't yell , I didn 't rant and rave or threaten dire consequences , I calmly reminded her of the rules . Her own conscience , though , is creating guilt that she 's trying to blame on me . . It 's time to try a new tactic . New tactics are getting much harder to find , unfortunately . This evening , I 'm instituting a reverse sticker chart . I read about it in one of the forums here . I will get a sticker every time she is disrespectful , lies , or fails to follow the house ruled . After I get a certain number of stickers , I will get a treat . I have to figure out what my treat will be , but I 'll come up with something . Hopefully it will help me get back the attitude I had on Sunday morning . . One of the books I read on Reactive Attachment Disorder talked about the importance of being " predictably unpredictable . " I know that the reverse sticker chart won 't solve the problem forever , but that 's okay . If it gives us a few good days , I 'll be grateful . Posted by Today has been a day for taking care of business . In the office this morning I worked on updating our database and straightening out some mailing lists . I took a break to take a young woman out to lunch and then came home and finished my income taxes . They were complicated by the family trust and the fact that I hired household help . I called Far Away Sister and she pulled up their tax return on turbo . tax , and I finally figured out what I needed to change in order for it to be accepted . Her husband had problems at the same point . Sister is going to work on her taxes tonight , and said she 'd call me if she got stuck . The good news , though , is that I don 't owe any additional taxes . I also exchanged some emails with the attorney who is setting up my will and the special needs trust for Daughter . . Daughter came home in a surly mood . I asked her what was wrong , and she told me she wasn 't allowed to talk about it at home . I reminded her that she also wasn 't supposed to take out her bad mood on me , and she managed to turn it around . She seems happier , and I think she 's being a bit more responsible . I have no idea why she is improving , but I am very grateful . She was even able to take some teasing at supper , and expressed appreciation for the chef salad and fruit salad I had made . . I have a couple coming for premarital counseling tonight . When they first contacted me , I wasn 't sure I 'd be here for their wedding . I struggled with whether or not I should tell them I might not be here for their wedding . I 'm going to be here for the next two weddings , and maybe even the one in January . . God will provide the right place at the right time . I may need to listen to yesterday 's podcast again . . . . Yesterday evening Daughter came to me and asked , " Are you taking your shower in the morning ? " . " I haven 't decided yet . Don 't you want to take yours in the morning ? I thought this morning was fun . " . " I thought it was torture ! " . I was delighted to know that Daughter had found my cheery shower attitude to be torture . It was what I wanted to happen - - she got her way , and it didn 't work out as she had hoped . . I have spent the day running errands . This is the first chance I 've had to sit down at the computer . It was a long day , but I got quite a big accomplished . Neurologist is weaning Daughter off one of her seizure medications . We are both pleased . Even Daughter has decided he 's okay now that he is getting her off some of her meds . He told me he ran into some people from Tiny Village and told them that the preacher was a good friend of his . . Daughter was complaining about the fact that they 've moved her to a group that doesn 't have work at the workshop . She couldn 't figure out why . I suggest that if you turn down work enough times , they 'll take it away from you and give it to someone else . She was not pleased , but later told Therapist that she had been moved because she " spent too much time standing around , complaining , hiding in the bathroom , and not doing work . " . I thought Flasher was history , and that Phone Harasser was the current flame . As of today , that 's changed . She dumped PH and is back with Flasher . She told Therapist , " Do you want to hear the story of all the drama the workshop involving PH , Flasher , and me ? " . I was down yesterday after hearing I 'd missed out on another church . Today one of the podcasts I subscribe to spoke directly to my frustration . God always provides something to put things in perspective . Posted by At youth group tonight , Daughter went over to the park with the kids to play softball . Secretary and I stayed in the church kitchen , where we had a supper for the kids . One of Secretary 's Foster Sons came running in to tell me that Daughter had fallen . He looked concerned , but she was conscious , so I informed him it was attention seeking behavior and he should tell her to come back over to the church . FS grinned , " I kind of wondered . " . Daughter came in a few minutes later and showed us her injured knee and elbow . I looked and said , " No blood , you 're fine . " Secretary wasn 't impressed either . I told her to sit down . . She sat for a few minutes and then asked if she could go back and rejoin the game . I told her that no , I couldn 't risk her falling again . After we were done , I made her stay and lock the door for Secretary . She protested . I informed her she owed that to FS . . At track practice she 'd made a show of not feeling well and checking her blood sugar . I was watching , but didn 't ask how she was or move towards her . I 'm sure she was quite disappointed to discover her blood sugar was normal . . I hope that eventually she 'll figure out this attention seeking behavior isn 't working . I hope . I did have a wonderful time with our youth tonight . We truly have a great bunch of kids . It 's nice that I 'm finding rewards in my ministry to help shift my focus from the challenges with Daughter . I had a phone call today . The church I interviewed with last month is calling someone else . The right place will come at the right time . Posted by Daughter is very hard to roust from bed on Sunday mornings . I always have her shower the night before , so that we aren 't competing for the bathroom on Sunday mornings . She insisted she wanted to do it this morning , and I told her she had to do it last night . Of course , she had to show me I couldn 't control her , so she wet the bed . . Now Daughter and I have very different ideas of what constitutes washing in the shower . Very different ideas . Since I don 't watch her shower , I can 't force her to actually use shower gel and wash her body . Doesn 't work . This morning as soon as I got out of the shower , I began calling for her to get up and in the shower . She was slow , of course . I told her she 'd have to take her shower while I was still in the bathroom , since we were running out of time . So while I did my hair and make - up , she showered behind me . . I made sure I was cheery and congratulated her on winning - - she 'd certainly shown me that she could take her shower in the morning . My back was too her , but I could see every move she was making in the large mirror I was using . So I insisted she had to use soap . Then I insisted she had to wash her face . In fact , I wanted her to wash every part of her body . She was not happy , of course . But I stayed chipper and told her how wonderful it was that she 'd proved she could take her shower in the morning . I have to confess , I was having fun . She began breathing strangely and swaying . She was quite dramatic as she sat down in the bathtub and leaned against the shower door . I ignored it . I did tell her she 'd best get moving if she was going to have breakfast before church . . She finally realized she wasn 't going to win and stood up and finished her shower - - suddenly she wasn 't swaying at all . It 's amazing , the healing power of anger . I finished my preparations , came downstairs and began to set up her breakfast . She has Special Olympics track practice this afternoon , so she came downstairs wearing sweats . I informed her she wasn 't wearing sweats to church , and she 'd have plenty of time tReverend Mom This morning I realized that Daughter had once again gotten herself into her deep , dark hole , and probably didn 't know how to get out of it . I left a note at her place at the kitchen table entitled , " A Ladder out of the Deep , Dark Hole . " There was a list on it : Clean up bedroom and run the vacuum cleaner . Clean the back porch bathroom and sweep and vacuum the back porch . Respect Mom . The last item on the list was the ice cream place she wanted to go yesterday . She does better with written directions than she does with verbal ones , so I didn 't say a word . She read the list and said , " I can do this . " I heard her upstairs singing as she was doing her work . I figured something else out , too . She has been coming out of her room dressed only in a robe when I call her . She 's been upstairs masturbating , which triggers her PTSD big time . I confirmed that was what was going on , and explained it to her . I said , " I bet it feels good , but then you feel scared and angry . " She acknowledged this was the case . I told her that it was reminding her of bad things that happened when she was very little , but she was older now and had a voice , so that didn 't mean it would happen again . Far Away Sister suggested I check her cell phone to make sure she wasn 't taking pictures . I did , and she wasn ' tIt turns out Therapist was right . She broke up with Flasher on Wednesday , and told him she wouldn 't come back again . She said he was talking trash to her . I didn 't ask what that was . Of course , she 's now going with Phone Guy . She was talking on the phone to him quite a bit a couple of years ago . His parents told her they were going to report her to the cops for phone harassment . PG insisted that she was making all the phone calls . When PG 's mom called I told her that PG was making many of the calls . She insisted her son wasn 't making any of them , it was all Daughter . I went over the cell phone statement and highlighted the calls . PG was making more of them than Daughter . They never acknowledged that they 'd been wrong , of course . Whenever DaughterReverend Mom I asked Daughter to fold about a dozen microfiber cloths I had removed from the dryer . She folded one , and then couldn 't stay awake . She suggested that if I took her out for ice cream , that would wake her up . For some strange reason , I wasn 't in the mood to take her out for ice cream . . She spent the rest of the day hiding in her room . I intercepted 2 cans of pineapple and the can opener from her on her way up the stairs . I asked her if she ever planned to do a chore again . She informed me that I 'm scaring her so she 's just going to hide in her room all weekend . She 'll survive by sneaking food out of the pantry . She refuses to tell me what I 'm doing that 's scaring her . I have the feeling it is going to be a very long weekend . . . . Posted by Once again Daughter came downstairs this morning affectionate and apologetic . She seems to think that if she apologizes , it erases the reality that she is refusing to cooperate or do any work around the house . I 've got to admit , it 's a great idea . Refuse to work , let mom do everything , and then apologize and everything will be fine . . Being a mean mom , I don 't see it working that way . I told her I had been considering going to City tomorrow , but since I had all this extra work I was having to do , I was too far behind to make the trip . That bothered her quite a bit . Will it make a difference ? I doubt it . The problem is , at some point I 'm going to have to go to City . Since my day off is booked solid next week , it 's going to be hard to find a time I can go and not take her . I 'm reluctant , though , to give her what she considers a real treat when she is being so uncooperative here at home . . The good news is that she 's off to the workshop for another day . Hopefully my day will be productive , and tomorrow I can focus on household chores and not church work . Posted by Like many kids who got a rough start in life , Daughter has lots of food issues . I remember an incident from her early days with me . I had made Spanish rice for supper , and when we were done I was pleased to see that we had enough left over for a second meal . I left the kitchen to do something , and when I returned , Daughter had eaten all of the leftovers . She was 3 years old . . The diabetes complicates the food issues tremendously . Diabetes is hard enough without piling food issues on top of it . Everything she eats needs to be measured and covered with insulin . When she comes to me wanting to eat something , I seek to avoid saying no . I may ask her to wait until a specific time , or tell her she can choose one thing of two she wants . I may make suggestions of substitutions , but my goal is to avoid no . . I also seek to minimize temptations . She loves pop tarts . At various times she has talked me into buying a box for her breakfast . We discuss the fact that she can have one for breakfast , and she can 't sneak them . By the end of the first day , they have usually vanished . I finally stopped buying pop tarts . I generally make just enough food for the meal . Left overs are a temptation , and it is easier to calculate carbs if I just make two servings and then divide whatever it is between us . Generally , we don 't have chips in the house . The bag she took the other night was for taco salad . . Today when she came home from the workshop , she wanted to have a snack . She wanted the rest of the broccoli - rice casserole from Easter . I pointed out her blood sugar was a little high , and eating a snack would increase it , so she wouldn 't feel very good . I also pointed out that we would be eating supper within 30 minutes . I planned on the left over casserole and sausage sandwiches for supper . When I called her to come eat , she told me she didn 't feel good and wasn 't hungry . Just 30 minutes earlier she was begging for food . . Part of the issue is she has trouble interpreting her body 's messages . Within the last two years she has come to me comReverend Mom Daughter is trying so hard to hook me in to the workshop drama . This morning she was chipper when she got up , and was being cooperative . She kept calling me , " Your majesty , " and bowing to me . She even commented on how it was a good day . I walked into the kitchen where she was unloading the dishwasher . She was crying . Huge crocodile tears . I asked her what was wrong . Of course she didn 't respond right away . I had to ask several times as the crying intensified before she was able to speak and tell me the problem . . " I have to get a new job . " . " Why ? " . " I have to get a new job . " . " Why do you have to get a new job ? " . " Because of P - p - p - pregnant Best Friend . I can 't be there with her . " . " I 'm sorry you 're having problems with PBF . You have other friends there . " . " No I don 't . PBF has talked to all of them about me . I 'm sorry . I know I 'm not supposed to bring this stuff home . " . " Did you lie to her ? " . " No ! " . " Well , you have in the past . " . " But I promised PBF and a small group that I would never lie to them again . " . " Sometimes it takes a while for people to trust you again after you 've lied to them so many times . " . She gave up when she saw I wasn 't going to buy into the drama . It 's her responsibility , not mine . . She 's off to the workshop and even managed to cheer up before the bus came . As she was going out the door . She had one last thing to say as she bowed to me . I 'm trying to figure out whether she intended the literal meaning of I should take it as another sign of her challenges with proper use of some words . " I forbid you to have a good day , your majesty . " Maybe it was Freudian . . . . Posted by Today has been one of those days that reminds me how fortunate I am to be a pastor . I 've been working on the sermon for Sunday , and digging into it in ways that I haven 't in a very long time , going so far as to go to the original Greek . I 'm excited about the discoveries I 'm making , and look forward to sharing them with my people . . This afternoon I visited some of our elderly members . I talked to a woman who just turned 95 . She was excited about the party they had for her . She was so excited she told me about it a couple of times . Yes , she 's a bit confused , but she certainly remembered her party ! I talked to some of my favorite people , a wonderful couple who have been married for a very long time . He was a POW in WWII . She was telling me about a new book she 's reading , and we talked some about politics . I shared the highlights from Easter . . Then I went to visit a woman who recently returned to her home after a brief hospitalization and trip to a nursing home for rehab . She has buried her husband , daughter , great grandson , and her last surviving sibling fell and broke her hip this week . She was asking me questions about a sermon she 'd heard on tv . We talked about family , and how she 's coping with being home . Several times she repeated things I 've said to her over the years . She was repeating things I don 't remember saying , but she remembers them . My words have meant so much to her she 's held on to them and pulls them back out to help her understand / cope with situations . I can 't express what it means to me that my words would have such an impact on her life . . I consider it a gift when God gives me rewarding days in ministry following a frustrating day of parenting . It helps balance things out . . Daughter did call as I was headed to town today . She needed to be picked up from the workshop . I inquired as to why , hoping she 'd broken up with Flasher . The problem was with Pregnant Best Friend . PBF called her a liar at lunch today . I showed great restraint and didn 't point out to her that she does tell lots of lies . I didn ' Reverend Mom I was late getting to bed last night - - I had to cool off before my anger would let me sleep . As a result , I was a little late beginning my work out this morning , which meant that I had to fix Daughter 's breakfast , get her pills and insulin , and bring them all out into the living room so that she wouldn 't be in the kitchen unsupervised this morning . . She was apologetic this morning , but she won 't tell me that she 'll stop the behavior . I think that is an honest answer . She acknowledges that my rules are reasonable and designed to keep her safe , but she just can 't ( or won 't ) promise me that she 'll follow them . . As per our agreement with Therapist , we haven 't talked about Flasher . She 's still with him , because she went upstairs to brush her teeth after breakfast . Getting her to brush her teeth is almost impossible , so her desire to brush them can only be the result of wanting to please a man . Therapist thought that by the end of today it would be over . I don 't think that will be the case . It would be nice , but I think it 's going to take more time . . Flasher may be the one who breaks it off when he gets frustrated with only seeing her at the workshop and not be able to touch her there . I am glad it 's not my problem . Posted by Daughter 's blood sugars have been running low . I 've been gradually reducing her insulin as I try to eliminate the lows . I 've been concerned , because I know she 's into extra food . I can 't figure out why she 's running low if she 's into extra food . I 've wondered if she could have gotten a hold of some insulin , though I 'm really careful about keeping the insulin in a locked box in the refrigerator . . Yesterday I discovered two empty food containers upstairs in the tv room . She had them hidden in a foot locker that I use to store old video tapes . She had jammed so much stuff in there ( a number of her clean clothes that she didn 't want to hang up were also crammed in there - - I was watching the floor of her closet , so she had to find a new hiding space ) that she could no longer close the lid . That 's how I found it . . When she got home from the workshop today , her blood sugar was in the 60 's , which is too low . It shouldn 't have been that low , especially since she was a little high at lunch . She ate a few glucose tabs , and then I gave her some banana bread I 'd made yesterday to use up some over ripe bananas . She 'd has some banana bread for breakfast , and she was delighted when I gave her more to cover the low . She went upstairs to do her work . I went into the kitchen a few minutes later , and the banana bread was missing . There wasn 't much left , but I knew where it had been , and it was missing . . I went upstairs , and she was sleeping ( her blood sugar was high , so of course she was sleepy ) . I demanded to know what she 'd done with the banana bread . She 'd eaten it all and put the empty container on top of the refrigerator . She knew I was unhappy . . So a little later she comes downstairs and tells me how sorry she is and tells me she 's trying to show me respect and do what she 's supposed to do . Of course , she hasn 't taken care of the recycling that needs to go out tonight , or the dirty clothes she 's dumped on her bedroom floor , or finished hanging up the clothes I 'd discovered yesterday . I told her she at least had to get the recycliReverend Mom Yesterday Secretary had a biopsy on her lymph nodes . Today she is having knee surgery . She plans to be in the office on Thursday , though I 've told her that she should stay home . The good news is that the surgeon told her husband that he doesn 't think she has cancer - - he thinks her lymph nodes are swollen due to infection . . Daughter is unloading the dishwasher right now , and insisting she doesn 't have enough time to complete it . The bus won 't be here for at least 10 minutes and we have a small portable dishwasher . I could have it done in about 2 minutes , but she might not have time . She moves very slowly . . She didn 't wet the bed last night , and woke up in a chipper mood . She announced that if there is work today she will do it . Therapist told her she couldn 't call me , so we 'll see how she does with that . I 'm going to spend a bit of time in the office this morning before I head south for a meeting . The meeting will be church related , not about Daughter . That will be a welcome change . . I 'm relieved that the Flasher situation is now completely Daughter 's responsibility . I don 't want to know what 's going on with the relationship anymore . It 's not my problem . The challenge will to be to make sure that I continue to view it as her problem , and don 't allow her to suck me in . Posted by Daughter had an appointment with Therapist this morning . Fortunately , Therapist had an open hour following Daughter 's appointment . We needed it all . . Last Wednesday , Daughter began to ease back into full time at the workshop . It was the first time she had been there with Flasher for a while . She agreed to be his girl friend again . She wants to be his girl friend . . I 'm angry , scared , sad , defeated , you name it , I 'm feeling it . Therapist did her best to frame it in a helpful manner . We have a plan : Daughter has a voice . She used her voice to get into this , she will have to use her voice to get out of it when she 's ready . Flasher 's name is not to be mentioned in our home . None of us ( Therapist , Case Manager , Me ) will talk to Daughter about Flasher until after she 's broken up with him . It 's her problem , not ours , and we will not be pulled into the drama . . She knows I 'm angry . She sat in the back seat on the way home to give me space . She can see him at the workshop , but that 's it . There will be no enabling contact outside of the workshop . What happens at the workshop is to stay at the workshop , and she is not to bring the problems home . She is to be responsible and do her chores here at home . . I 'm going to have to get through the anger so I can relate to her in constructive ways about home life . Therapist gives the relationship 48 hours . I hope she 's right . We talked about how Daughter is looking more and more like she has Borderline Personality Disorder . Therapist tried to convince me it 's not that bad a diagnosis . She still has some work to do before I 'm going to believe it . . I hope I will still have a tongue by Sunday . I am afraid I may have bitten most of it off by then . The one good thing is that Daughter is going back to the workshop full time , beginning tomorrow . If I 'd had a lunch packed for her , I would have dropped her off today . There 's no point trying to protect her from something she wants . Having her gone 40 hours a week should lessen my stress level significantly . Posted by Daughter and I had a wonderful Easter dinner today - - just the two of us . It was a very good meal , and it was a total break with tradition . You see , my parents were procrastinators . They were good cooks , and could prepare wonderful meals . However , they always made it hard on themselves . Behind those good meals were frantic last minute preparations , last minute trips to the grocery store for things they had forgotten , and a terribly messy kitchen . If they weren 't pulling everything together at the last minute , somehow it wasn 't a holiday meal . . I 've kept the tradition of good meals , and dumped everything else . The fact that I 've lived 10 + miles from the closest grocery store for over 13 years has made me a much more efficient shopper . If I start to make something and find I 'm missing an ingredient , it is because Daughter has snuck it out of the kitchen to eat it . If I 'm not headed to town for something else , I postpone making whatever needed the missing ingredient . . Today we sat down to a good meal in a clean kitchen . We had ham , crescent rolls , a casserole made with brown rice and fresh broccoli , and strawberry cheesecake . All I had to do today was turn on the oven and open the can of crescent rolls . The rest of the preparation was done yesterday . I was able to enjoy a relaxed meal today . I was able to sit down and watch movies this afternoon without feeling like I should be cleaning the kitchen . . There are still other areas where I am not as prepared as I 'd like . Too many weeks I 'm finishing my sermon on Saturday evening . The desk in my study is an ongoing battle . I figure that if I can break the holiday meal chaos habit , I can become more organized in other areas as well . I can hold onto my parents ' good traditions , and improve on the more stressful ones . . It 's kind of like picking and choosing which of their personal items I want to keep . I keep the ones that give me joy and dispense with the ones that cause me stress or grief . I can do the same with their habits and traditions . I 'm grateful for the tradition ofReverend Mom I 'm a pastor and a mother . I was ordained in October of 1985 , and began serving this suburban congregation in October of 2010 . In March of 1990 I was asked to take an almost 3 year old " for the weekend . " Five years into the weekend I adopted her . Daughter carries a number of diagnoses : Reactive Attachment Disorder , Post - Traumatic Stress Disorder , Central Auditory Processing Disorder , Bipolar , seizure disorder , and type 1 diabetes . She moved into a group home in November of 2011 . She attends a sheltered workshop and sings in the church choir . View my complete profile Daughter became my foster child in 1990 , shortly before she turned 3 , and I adopted her when she was 8 . Capital is a state capital in the midwest . In October of 2010 I became pastor of a church on the edge of town . Administrative Assistant is my keeper . She runs the office at the church , and at heart is an artist . She helps turn my crazy ideas into reality . Program is where Daughter spends most of her days . She does some piece work and participates in some classes and activities . She 'd like to get community employment , but still has some work to do to make that possible . Sister Best Friend and I met in seminary . We vacationed together for a number of years , and then she got married . We still do some cooperative worship planning . She seves a church less than an hour away . Far Away Sister is 4 . 5 years young than me . She lives across the country . She was an electrical engineer until she stayed home to raise Tall Niece and Nephew . Now that they are graduating , she is planning to become a high school math teacher . Sister is 10 years young than me . She is divorced and the mother of Short Niece . She lives in the same state as Capital . She is a teacher . Brother is 11 1 / 2 years younger than I am . He finally got married in February of 2009 . He lives near Sister . They are the parents of Baby Nephew . Not sure where to begin . This blog has been neglected since April . I have not felt the need to write here of vomit my drama onto these pages at all . My . . . |
It all began 3 months ago with a phone call from the hotel my mom was living at in Mexico . I was informed that she was malnourished and unable to walk . I asked a dear friend who was in Mexico to go see her and get her into the hospital . When he got there he informed us that she was in a very bad way . I was frustrated and struggling with my feelings because Hilda was an alcoholic and I felt that once again she was in bad shape from her own doing . I will never forget when I saw my mother at the airport . She was in a wheelchair and was maybe 90 lbs . She was unable to walk and I soon learned she was in need of adult diapers . I was in shock . She was only 63 years old . I was filled with rage because I thought her drinking really did her in this time . I tried to care for her myself but I couldn 't do it alone . I took her to the hospital here and the doctors said they felt she had cirrhosis and Wernicke 's encephalopathy . The amount of care she needed Sean and I could not provide so we began looking at moving her into an assisted living facility . That was a really hard pill to swallow thinking that she was going to have to live in a home for the rest of her life . After a week and a half in the hospital the doctors decided they wanted to do a colonoscopy before they released her . That Friday Sean , Parker and I where driving to dinner when the doctor called to tell me that they had found a mass in her colon . My mom had stage 4 colon cancer . At that moment I was in so much shock . We immediately went from looking at assisted living to knowing she was going to die . All of our plans changed and it became important to me to have my mom come home . Hilda did not want to know her diagnosis and this made it extremely hard on me . I was so frustrated . Although she knew she had cancer she did not know how bad it was , however , she made the decision to have chemo . Her treatments where once every two weeks and during that time I was her caretaker . This was trying at times but it was a blessing . The most amazing thing happened . She was not having pain or side effects to the chemo ! Also , during this journey , everywhere I went starting from day one at the hospital I had either friends or clients working at the places we went to ! Everywhere from the hospital to rehab to the cancer center . On Friday it was my mom 's third chemo treatment and we got the results that her tumor markers were down . It was hard not to have hope but at the same time there would not be a miracle that would happen for her either . The next day I went to work . When I got home I walked in and found my mom had had a stroke . We called 911 and she was readmitted to the hospital . She had minimal damage , however , the look in her eyes was changed . It was now as if she had given up hope . She spent four days in the hospital during which time I had a heart to heart talk with the head of neurology . He told me there was nothing he could do to prevent future strokes because of mom 's internal bleeds . But he said to me , " You need to bring her home and spend what time you have left with her . " It became very real that we were at the end . I think I knew in my head but somewhere in my heart I believed that she would keep going . Hilda and I did not have the easiest life together . Growing up with an alcoholic was hard and trying at times and the past seven years her drinking went to new levels . We placed her in many detox places as well took her to Mexico for a fresh start . She just never seemed to get it . The constant stress from worrying about her became very tiring on me and my family . I prayed that she would get herself healthy so when I got the call she was ill it was devastating . Knowing that she was now dying from cancer , I hoped that she would not avoid death like she did life . Coming home after the stroke she was not the same . I started to get really worried because she was sleeping a lot . I called the at home health doctor who came out to visit on Sunday . Mom 's blood pressure had dropped and the doctor suggested it was time for Hospice . I asked how long she felt my mom had to live and she looked at me and said , " Two weeks . " ( She was right . Mom died two weeks later on a Sunday . ) So I waited and I watched and I cared for her . Wednesday morning when I woke up she was trying to get out of bed . She was bright eyed and bushy tailed ! She was so happy and talkative , making jokes and full of life . And she treated me so special . I had not seen her like that since I was a little kid . I was so in shock that I decided to call the nurse and ask her what was going on because I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone . The nurse said it was called the " last serge of energy " and that I needed to enjoy it . She said sometimes it lasts for hours , sometimes days . That particular day was amazing ! We laughed and ate and most amazingly , Parker played with her . You see , Parker had a hard time with my mom . They were so close but before we left Mexico her drinking had started to take a toll and Parker withdrew . It was hard to watch my daughter try to process everything that was happening now . But on that Wednesday Parker came into her room and sat with us and played with us put make - up on Hilda just like she used to . The " serge " carried on until Thursday and come Friday she started sleeping a lot again . The nurse felt she could go at anytime , however she was not done yet . The emotional roller coaster was getting harder , care - taking for her and some of the things I experienced and saw were getting even harder still . As the weekend came and went she was sleeping more and more and slowly getting more confused and struggling to find words . She was in no pain which was a blessing . Tuesday morning I found myself talking to the nurse and telling her that my mom kept looking at me as if she needed to say something . The nurse said she felt it was time to have a talk with Hilda because she felt that maybe she was holding on for some reason . So we sat down together and talked with my mom . After realizing that Hilda didn 't understand hospice , the nurse explained to her that hospice is called when a person has less than six months to live . Upon hearing this she looked at me and then the nurse and then she started to cry realizing that she was going to die . The nurse told her , " I am not telling you this to hurt you but to help you . You don 't have to say anything but your daughter might have something to say . " The nurse then looked at me and said , " Do you want to say something to your mom ? " I looked at her and said , " Mom , I love you so much . I am so happy you are here with me and I can take care of you . I need to tell you that I know we had some hard times but you need to know that I forgive you and love you . " My mom started to cry and just stared at me . The nurse gave us such a gift . My mom looked relieved and I was able to talk to her more after the nurse left . She looked at me as her eyes said sorry and reached out for me and said I love you followed by a kiss . I felt so free for the first time . I was able to say that I truly forgave her for everything and she looked at peace . For the next few days she laid in bed with a smile on her face like she was relieved and had truly found peace for the first time in her life . The nurse felt Hilda would pass any time now but my mom seemed to be holding on to something , I really believe it was that she truly found peace . Starting on Friday she started to have some pain in her chest so we started medicating her to help with the pain . By Saturday she was sleeping more and complaining of more pain . I called the weekend nurse and she came out and told me it was time to start the morphine . The nurse felt the time was very near . That night I had to start her on Morphine and other meds every hour . It was a long night . Sean took over at 7 AM so I could sleep . When I woke up at 12 and walked in a room she was making a noise that seemed to say , " Where have you been ? ? ? ? " The nurse came by and again was shocked that she was still going . Later that afternoon the health aid care giver and I were there when my uncle called . My mom and him have not talked in eight years . He asked if I could put the phone up to her ear so he was able to say his goodbyes . I was trying to think what else was she holding on for . Then I felt that maybe she needed to make peace with my dad even though there marriage had been over for 33 years . Maybe there was still something there she needed to have closure on ? You know , they say that people can hear you even though they are not conscious . I always had a hard time believing that . I thought it was just something people say to make you feel better . Well , my mom had a heart monitor on her finger and her heart rate had been consistently 144 to 154 for hours . I texted my dad saying it was the end if he wanted to call he could . When he did , I put the phone up to my mom 's ear and her heart rate dropped to 90 . The care giver and I looked at each other in shock ! When my dad was done I pulled the phone away and her heart rate went back up to 154 . I told my dad what happened and he asked to talk to her again and as soon as he started to talk her heart rate went back down to 90 . After he was done she had another change downhill . I truly believed she could hear everything . After that the nurse , aid , kids , and I sat around looking at old pictures sharing stories and laughing . The aid gave her a bath and we put a dress on her . I asked the nurse again how long she thought ? ? ? I was shocked she was still going . I then remembered what the other nurse said to me - " Sometimes a person wants to die alone and she might wait for you to leave . " My biggest fear was for her to die alone since alone is how she felt her whole life ! But it was 9 : 30 and the nurse said we should all leave the room and see if that is what she is waiting for . So everyone left but I stayed behind to say goodbye . I was sitting next to her and this is what I said , " Mom , I love you so much , I am so grateful we had this journey and you allowed me to be here with you . Thank you for choosing me and adopting me . I am lucky to have you as a mom . I respect your wishes if you would like to die alone , however , I want to give you one last chance … . . If you want me to be here and hold your hand til the end you need to give me a sign to stay . " Just after I said that her breathing changed significantly so I moved to the other side of the bed and rubbed her head and held her hand saying it was OK to go and please be free , I will be OK . I said that over and over as she took her last six breaths of air . She gave me the last thing I wanted for her : to not die alone . Thank you for being on this journey with me . It is hard to lose your mom but also hard to be in the role of a caretaker for three months . This journey has been a wild ride . I am truly grateful . My biggest fear was she would die and we would not have closure . I got more than I could have ever expected . I thank my friends and family for their support and most of all I thank the Heartland Hospice staff . Because of them my nurse gave me gifts I never would have received . I tried to blind myself of my abilities many years ago . It worked well , though not completely blocking everything out . I decided about a year ago to accept and embrace my abilities . Once I did , I felt a happiness , a knowing that this is what 's been missing from my life . But , I still have a block and I can 't figure out what it is . I 'm feeling an ache , as though something is within reach but I 'm not able to touch it . Any advice or sense of the direction I need to take or what the block is ? Thank you for sharing your story ! I can relate to it so much as it hits a familiar cord in my soul . I remember being a little girl and having experiences . I shut them off as a child because I did not have anyone to help me understand . With situations like this , as time goes on you feel different from others and try to fit in any way you can . It is almost like you conform who to what others want you to be . I feel for you that you worked so hard to be something that never fit for you . There were times when you turned off your gifts and you had to do things that might not have been in true alignment with who you are . It put you in situations that were dangerous for you . As you slowly started to see the light and realize that this was not who you truly were , your spirit slowly started to awaken . Tuning into your life to see what the block might be , I feel that you have some areas in your life that feel like you still have not forgiven yourself and others . There is some healing that needs to be done . Now I know you have done a lot of work , but there is still some areas , like with your parents . The block is that you are not allowing yourself or giving yourself full permission to be in your power and allow yourself to be true to you ! You are well on your way so please do not get discouraged . I feel that you are breaking down this block and what I want you to do is reflect back to different situations in your life that you felt less than or when you felt that you could not be in your power . Start from the beginning until now . As you look at the different situations that come up , what you want to do is consider what you could have done to be empowered or to have had a different experience . Doing this allows for subtle energy shifts that actually heal the situation in your own personal vibration . This will take time but as you do this work you will break the block and be complete in your gifts ! Stay strong ! July 11 , 2012 By Melissa Frei Leave a Comment Dearest Melissa , Thank you for this space to express my feelings . I read all these posts and could relate . I am like okkkay this is too coincidental that I could relate with you on the doggie posts and being stuck . We had to put our beloved puppy of 16 years also back in September and still feel so sad . Buster was my first pet and he was such an awesome dog . He was like my baby , as God didn 't have children written in my books , at least not yet , perhaps soon ? Only time would tell . Buster was the kewlest loving passionate dog anyone could ever ask for . I know he is with me always and I think about him a lot . I ask him to tell me how it is up there in heaven and what he does during the days and nights and give me a sign that he is a okayyyy and still watching over us . Thank you for any healing insight . First of all thank you for letting me connect with Buster . You 're right , he is pretty cool ! As I started to tune into his energy , it was funny because he sat down , cocked his head to the right , his left ear perked up higher than the right and his eyes looked deeply at me and spoke a thousand words . Buster was definitely here to help . I feel like he helped people that were nervous . For example , if you had someone come over to your house that was worried , anxious or nervous , he would sit in front of them and try to energetically balance them out . He was / is truly gifted with this . It was his goal to help spread calm and peace to everyone he encountered . This was his first time coming here as a dog . He was so excited to come into your life as you both taught each other and learned together . You both have a great past life connection and I can also say that this is not the last life that you will be connected . He is very much around you . I feel that he is also a guide for you and working with you and others to help create a balance and release anxiety . I believe that all spirits have jobs on the other side . I feel like Buster is helping others cross over . More specifically he is helping spirits that are afraid of transitioning to the other side . He is helping them to feel safe and calm to let their spirit go . He is truly amazing and working hard still helping mankind . The signs that he says that he shows you are moving things around or knocking then off a table . He also says that he plays your favorite song . He says he is here to support you , so please call on him whenever you need his help and support . He is doing AMAZING ! He loves you ! In December I lost someone that I loved very much and I miss him . I speak to him daily and I often write him letters . My question is , does he know ? Can he hear me ? We had a problem in our relationship before he passed and I did not get to say good - bye to him , his death was sudden and I know that he was unhappy the day he passed . I need him to forgive . Is this possible ? I have found Jesus through his death however and I am studying the bible . My grief is less because of Jesus being in my life . I want to start off by saying I am so sorry for your loss . It is so hard when we lose someone that we care for . We all have our own way that we process the passing and it is hard not to start searching for answers , but please allow yourself to feel the feelings of the loss . It can be hard to do but someone once said to me " Melissa , your feelings can 't kill you , only your actions " I feel so drawn to tell you this and that it is OK to feel the feelings behind this loss and it is OK however you are grieving ! Let me address the question " Does he know and hear you ? " YES ! He is hearing everything you are saying to him , and what you are writing to him . He is all around you surrounding you with love and healing . A lot of times we talk and talk and so it is only common to wonder if anyone is really listening ? Well , yes , and continue to talk to him and write to him . I am going to give you an exercises to do : This is an Automatic Writing Exercise in two parts : Part 1 - This is a great way to communicate with our loved ones . Start off by getting in a relaxed position and have pen and paper with you . Take some deep breaths so you can relax . Next , you will write your loved one a letter , whatever you want , whether it is something heavy on your mind , advice or even closure . After you are done writing your letter , you have a choice as to what to do next . You can immediately start the part 2 or you can walk away until you feel ready to do part 2 . Part two - Sit and get in a relaxed position , take some deep breaths and call upon your loved one . You will wait until you feel their presence then when you are ready you will start to write a letter back to yourself from your loved one ! This is a great exercise and the key is to practice and have FUN ! Just remember that you are not alone and your loved one is with you , so continue to remain open . The last thing that I get around this is I feel that one of your symbols from him is quarters ! So just know that when you find quarters they are signs from above ! My beloved dog , Jack , passed away three years ago . He was sixteen years old and the love of my life . I miss him every day although I know his Spirit is always with me . I dream of him often and I talk to him all the time and always when I am cooking ! He used to sit in the kitchen and watch me cook and now , whenever I cook , I always end up accidentally dropping some food I know that is a ' wink ' to him that that food is his ! I keep his ashes on a shelf in my living room . I wrapped his collar around the urn . In the past few weeks I have come home twice to see his collar on the ground in front of the shelf . This is very odd since the collar is literally wrapped around the urn and cannot easily fall off . Any insight into why this is happening ? I feel it is a sign from him . Am I right ? I want to start off by saying thank you for allowing me to connect with Jack , he is amazing . He is such an old soul with whole lot of spunk . You know the one thing that I have learned by communicating with animals is that they are all around us . They usually stay with us when they pass away until they make their way back into our lives . There is a special connection that we carry with our pets ; they come into our lives to teach us whatever we need to learn at that time . When they pass they continue to stand by our sides . The really great thing is that you can still utilize them in that matter and make the connection . I have found that our pets come into our lives several time throughout our current lifetime . You feel that Jack has a message for you and you are spot on ! I feel that he communicates with you all of the time and I feel that he still sits in your kitchen while you are cooking . But yes there is a bigger message . I feel that he is saying to you : I know that you have thought about getting a new pet , you think how much you miss me and then get filled with sadness and think , " I don 't want to go through that again " . " I know you are in a place of vacillating back and forth . My message to you is that I am ready to come back into your life when you are . I have been trying to let you know that I am ready . There is no pressure as you know when you need to do it ; I just want you to know I am ready . " Thank you Jack 's mom for letting me experience him , he is ready to come back into your life ; however you have to feel 100 % ready to have that happen again . He will not be the same temperament as your Jack was but it will be his spirit . Time will tell but just trust and know in your heart when you are ready , and when you are ready to go for walk he will be there ! My question has to do with my guy Mike . I have known him for three years and he is married so our friendship / relationship is not based on just sex but a bond and trust we have for each other . I don 't want to influence him in any way to leave his wife , that has to be his choice and in his time . Do I wait or go ? My heart says wait , hang in there . My head tells me are you nuts ! Where does his heart stand with me ? And what does he really want ? What do I need to learn while I am waiting ? When I read this I definitely heard is that you are indeed " waiting " for this man because he is not available right now , nor is he in a position to be open for you in a relationship . But when I say to you that he is not available what I mean is that , yes , he might be married but that is not why he is unavailable . So lets shine some light on him . I feel that he is unavailable in all of his relationships be it his marriage , with you , friends or family . He is a person that has a hard time making a commitment because he is afraid he will loose something if he commits . Why I feel this is important is because we need to take you out of the picture so you can see what he is going through and how he shows up in life . He feels like if he makes drastic changes in thinking it will solve problems but it never does . No matter what he thinks it does not hit the root of the issue for himself . I feel like one day he will make a choice for himself that is productive without spinning his wheels . I have the hope that he will get clear with himself and realize that he has to find his own answers to peace and happiness . I feel that he does care about you and that he is as authentic as he can be with you . I also feel that you give him something that he is not able to receive from anyone else . There is a great connection between the two of you . However , it is a safe feeling that he has with you while he is unavailable . He does not have to worry about the commitment thing with you so you are safe . The reason I say this is because if he leaves his relationship , you need to make sure he has worked on himself or else he will recreate the same thing with you that he had with his wife . What do you need to learn ? You need to ask yourself why you are putting your life on hold . Is there a safety you find with him because he is unavailable ? I feel that you have a trend of dating men that are emotionally unavailable . So I feel what you need to learn during this time is what you truly want in life . What are you worth to yourself ? Allow yourself to feel that your head and your heart and your gut are all in alignment . I feel like you need to look at your part in this waiting game and heal your past relationships . If he is ready or if you choose to let someone else in , you need to have your side of the street clean and be ready for an amazing relationship . You are worth it ! You both are amazing people , but you each need to heal your own lives and clean up both of your " baggage " before you can move on . The gift is that you both have an opportunity to heal and work on yourselves . Once the work is complete you can make clean decisions and potentially move in a GREAT direction . In 1993 my grandmother had a stroke and fell into a coma that she did not recover from . I flew to Ohio to join my family at her deathbed . I brought with me most of the jewelry that she had given me . It included 3 rings , a necklace and a pair of earrings . I wore them during the week I was there , during which , she died at her home , with all of us family surrounding her , talking to her and holding her hands . Upon my return home , as I unpacked , I found that my jewelry was gone . I do not remember taking it off in Ohio , or packing it for the flight home . It was just gone . All the jewelry that I 'd brought with me wasn 't gone , just the finer items that Grandma Blanche had given me . WHAT HAPPENED TO MY JEWELRY ? It has been the big , heart - wrenching mystery of my life for the past 20 years . Please can you enlighten me on this matter ? WOW ! When I read this I had a lot of strong emotions . First , I felt how amazing it was that you were all able to be there with your grandmother . The love that I felt around the whole family being together was magical and the support amazing . She acknowledges that she had so much fear in her passing but that the united front that the family had formed helped her let go and cross over . She wants to really acknowledge that and say thank you ! As far as the jewelry , I can feel the energy of it on your body during that time . I also feel that there was a female there at that time that feels younger and not on a great path at the time . I get that she has addiction problems . I also feel that there was a lot of jealous energy around her as well . I hear the name ' Marie ' as I am typing this message . The day before you left I feel that the jewelry did come off . I know that you said that you do not remember taking it off , but I felt that you did . I felt that it was off over night . Now I also keep hearing a Thursday night around this as well . I feel that this women / girl took the jewelry . I feel that she took it for the money that she could receive for it . I also see that it was all in a spot on a little dark brown table / nightstand . I know this is a lot of information , but let it sink in and see how it feels . Another thing you might want to try and do is before you go to bed , write down on a piece of paper " What happened to the jewelry ? " . Allow yourself to experience and remember in your open dream state ! I hope this helps . I do feel that unfortunately the jewelry was taken to a pawn shop . The final message that I feel from your grandma is , " It is OK that it is gone . You have a special part of me in your soul and spirit ! You have something that nobody could ever take . I ask you to remember the time that was spent between you and I , like when you were a little girl playing dress up and putting lipstick on . Those are the memories we will always have ! " I met him at church - through my church 's pet ministry where they save animals and then bring them out at the end of a service … almost 2 years ago , when he was about 7 months old . He was named Rocky already and really is adorable . There were a few signs that made me pay attention . The problems are with other dogs , and his obsessive , high energy play that keeps us from the dog parks . Even when walking ( on leash ) he 'll want to lurch out or bark at some people and most dogs . I am going to address these behavior problems with a trainer , tool , but just thought I 'd share . You know , when we come across a pet we often look at them and wonder " How did you find me ? " Do they choose us or do we choose them ? I find that the path of our beloved pets might be as simple as we are the the person to help them find their home , we may have had many past life connections or we just wanted a companion and found each other . In the case of your Rocky , I feel like there iss a mix of reasons , so lets start out with your connection with him . I feel like you both needed each other at that time he came into your life and I feel that this is the first time this lifetime is the first time you have connected . Rocky had been tossed around in his short amount of time and I do not feel that he was abused , however , I do feel that he never really had any stability in his life . He needed to have a rock , a person that was patient , kind and loving to be able to work with him to be who he truly is . I also feel that he was taken from his mother and his litter mates too soon . As far as why you … well you have such a gentle soul and spirit ! Plus , this is an important project for you as well . I feel that about 6 months before you found each other that you had a loss and a big transition . . it feels as though you had / have a void . So now he came into your life ! He is a project for you in the sense that you can heal from that void as well as have a great pup ! Here is why he has problems : Like I said earlier , I feel like he was taken from his litter mates too soon so he never really learned how to be in a pack as well as how to interact with other dogs . In such a short amount of time being moved and taken from his mom he became extremely scared which in turn makes him a " Fear Biter " or one who reacts aggressively out of fear . I feel the training would be great for him , but I will also give you some tool 's too ! 1 . Dog parks are not good for dogs ! There are many reasons dog parks are not good . Mainly you are asking strange dogs to fit in a " different " pecking order each time they go to the park . Second , you are trusting that the other owners are responsible and all the dogs will get along . Imagine that you bring Rocky to the park , you are already nervous because of how he acts with others , then you have the energy of all the people there who are nervous or had a bad day and so on . So we have theses sensitive creatures all trying to " play " in all this energy , it is not good . So I say keep him out anyway ! 2 . His is obsessive because he needs to channel that energy ! First I would say that he needs to go on at least 2 LONG walks a day . He is bored and anxious so it comes out as obsessive . He needs to be " working " . He needs to feel like he has a part to play in life ! You can play games with him like hiding hot dogs pieces throughout the house and let him find them . 3 . Work with him on the leach . Keep cut up tiny hot dog pieces with you and have him sit when other dogs come up with people . When he sits give him the hot dogs . This will all take time , so you need to be the pack leader to help guide him . I really feel that this is the time for you to also heal yourself ! You will be able to heal that part of you that went missing . You both are on an amazing path together ! It will take time as well as trust . He chose you because he knows that you are his pack leader and you are the one who will help him be able to live a strong and healthy life ! I want to also tell you to not don 't get discouraged as it is important for you to stay strong and trust that he has an amazing purpose in your life ! He will also have a strong and lovely impact on others . I feel like he will become your side kick ! He needs to have trust and know that you are committed to him and that is why I say do not get discouraged because he can feel that ! You are both on an amazing path so stay strong ! ! ! ! Why is it that the death of a parent so often triggers bitter family issues ? I have seen this on several occasions . The most recent was with my aunt and uncle . When my uncle passed his son stopped communication with his mother and sister and actually took them to court over the will . Since I stay in contact with his family , he does not talk to me and will only email if he needs to know something . We used to be as close as a brother and sister . I know this is not the only family to suffer from this type of situation after a death . Any insight would be appreciated . Thank you This is a great question . It is funny how when we are in the process of losing a loved one families come together and even unite in solidarity , however , when when the loved one actually passes it can be like someone flipped a switch and there is a WAR ! 75 % of the Mediumship readings I do clients share a story that is exactly like yours so I was so excited to look at this as it is so common . I decided to channel my guides and ask them to answer your question : " This is a great lesson for you all , the human attachment to each other is amazing to watch . You love each other , hate each other , are jealous , betray , honor … . you do so many things with and to each other . The hardest thing for you to do is that which you do not do often enough - unconditionally love and forgive . " I speak of this because when we look at the son and father in question we see that they had a struggle in life together as did the mother and son . There where many hurts the son had . Now imagine all that resentment inside of you and how you might feel owed for having not been valued or loved and having endured a lot of hate . When his father died he had an array of emotions - he was happy , sad , devastated and mad . All the anger and feelings he had toward his father came to the surface . He had these same feelings toward his mother doubling the effect . Since this was an unresolved issue for him at the time of their death , and he sat with the guilt and resentment , he took the hatred and anger out on others … the family . " " It is best to look at it like this : If you leave things in your life unresolved with others it can stay with you forever . It is best to resolve situations around you especially with family . When you experience the death of a family member every human emotion possible comes to light . Those emotions mix with unresolved relationships and you get fighting over money , property or whatever the human thinks they are " owed " . Filed Under : Dear Melissa In a Beautiful Urn , she rests . . . May 11 , 2011 By Melissa Frei Leave a Comment In a Beautiful Urn , she rests … Dear Melissa ! I have a question . When a loved ones passes and they are cremated , is it a coincidence which family member 's house the remains end up staying at . So I , out of our family just ended up with my loved ones ashes in a beautiful urn that was created for her out of porcelain and hand painted , but I am curious if there is a particular reason if she / my family member that passed chose to be here at my home in her urn ? Thank you , WOW , what an amazing question ! Before we get started I have to tell you that I took a look at the amount of energy that is around you and it is absolutely beautiful . This is the first time that I have ever been asked this question , so I sat with it and meditated on it for 6 days . I know it sounds like a lot but what I wanted to do was to go very deeply into my communication with my spiritual team on the other side to get the answers to this question ! " People often wonder what happens to the spirit in the crossing over process , whether the spirit cares if they are cremated or buried . It is simply up to the humans . Once the spirit is free from the human body it no longer has attachment to the physical body , the choice to cremate or bury is up to the loved ones . It is for the human and what they need in their life for closure . " " Your situation is different . There is a connection between you and the spirit that goes way back . You both are so deeply connected by the bond of the gifts you posses . You two are more similar than you may think . She is here in spirit form to help you connect . She helped the urn come to you for a reminder to you . You have great gifts inside , you have passions that you are afraid to follow and she is here to help you navigate through any fears and live your passions . You will feel her presence around you as she is now here to help guide you . The place where she rests is in your home for you to have a reminder ! " I hope this helps . You have a great gift and from what I experienced during my channeling session , your life is just beginning ! You can call upon her to help you in your life ! START living your dreams ! Don 't be afraid ! You have support ! Essential Oil Diffusers Essential Oil for December PURCHASE HERE ! JOYFUL BLEND - " The Oil of Bliss " will assist you in raising your vibration , elevating your mood , bringing a … Read More . . . |
It all began 3 months ago with a phone call from the hotel my mom was living at in Mexico . I was informed that she was malnourished and unable to walk . I asked a dear friend who was in Mexico to go see her and get her into the hospital . When he got there he informed us that she was in a very bad way . I was frustrated and struggling with my feelings because Hilda was an alcoholic and I felt that once again she was in bad shape from her own doing . I will never forget when I saw my mother at the airport . She was in a wheelchair and was maybe 90 lbs . She was unable to walk and I soon learned she was in need of adult diapers . I was in shock . She was only 63 years old . I was filled with rage because I thought her drinking really did her in this time . I tried to care for her myself but I couldn 't do it alone . I took her to the hospital here and the doctors said they felt she had cirrhosis and Wernicke 's encephalopathy . The amount of care she needed Sean and I could not provide so we began looking at moving her into an assisted living facility . That was a really hard pill to swallow thinking that she was going to have to live in a home for the rest of her life . After a week and a half in the hospital the doctors decided they wanted to do a colonoscopy before they released her . That Friday Sean , Parker and I where driving to dinner when the doctor called to tell me that they had found a mass in her colon . My mom had stage 4 colon cancer . At that moment I was in so much shock . We immediately went from looking at assisted living to knowing she was going to die . All of our plans changed and it became important to me to have my mom come home . Hilda did not want to know her diagnosis and this made it extremely hard on me . I was so frustrated . Although she knew she had cancer she did not know how bad it was , however , she made the decision to have chemo . Her treatments where once every two weeks and during that time I was her caretaker . This was trying at times but it was a blessing . The most amazing thing happened . She was not having pain or side effects to the chemo ! Also , during this journey , everywhere I went starting from day one at the hospital I had either friends or clients working at the places we went to ! Everywhere from the hospital to rehab to the cancer center . On Friday it was my mom 's third chemo treatment and we got the results that her tumor markers were down . It was hard not to have hope but at the same time there would not be a miracle that would happen for her either . The next day I went to work . When I got home I walked in and found my mom had had a stroke . We called 911 and she was readmitted to the hospital . She had minimal damage , however , the look in her eyes was changed . It was now as if she had given up hope . She spent four days in the hospital during which time I had a heart to heart talk with the head of neurology . He told me there was nothing he could do to prevent future strokes because of mom 's internal bleeds . But he said to me , " You need to bring her home and spend what time you have left with her . " It became very real that we were at the end . I think I knew in my head but somewhere in my heart I believed that she would keep going . Hilda and I did not have the easiest life together . Growing up with an alcoholic was hard and trying at times and the past seven years her drinking went to new levels . We placed her in many detox places as well took her to Mexico for a fresh start . She just never seemed to get it . The constant stress from worrying about her became very tiring on me and my family . I prayed that she would get herself healthy so when I got the call she was ill it was devastating . Knowing that she was now dying from cancer , I hoped that she would not avoid death like she did life . Coming home after the stroke she was not the same . I started to get really worried because she was sleeping a lot . I called the at home health doctor who came out to visit on Sunday . Mom 's blood pressure had dropped and the doctor suggested it was time for Hospice . I asked how long she felt my mom had to live and she looked at me and said , " Two weeks . " ( She was right . Mom died two weeks later on a Sunday . ) So I waited and I watched and I cared for her . Wednesday morning when I woke up she was trying to get out of bed . She was bright eyed and bushy tailed ! She was so happy and talkative , making jokes and full of life . And she treated me so special . I had not seen her like that since I was a little kid . I was so in shock that I decided to call the nurse and ask her what was going on because I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone . The nurse said it was called the " last serge of energy " and that I needed to enjoy it . She said sometimes it lasts for hours , sometimes days . That particular day was amazing ! We laughed and ate and most amazingly , Parker played with her . You see , Parker had a hard time with my mom . They were so close but before we left Mexico her drinking had started to take a toll and Parker withdrew . It was hard to watch my daughter try to process everything that was happening now . But on that Wednesday Parker came into her room and sat with us and played with us put make - up on Hilda just like she used to . The " serge " carried on until Thursday and come Friday she started sleeping a lot again . The nurse felt she could go at anytime , however she was not done yet . The emotional roller coaster was getting harder , care - taking for her and some of the things I experienced and saw were getting even harder still . As the weekend came and went she was sleeping more and more and slowly getting more confused and struggling to find words . She was in no pain which was a blessing . Tuesday morning I found myself talking to the nurse and telling her that my mom kept looking at me as if she needed to say something . The nurse said she felt it was time to have a talk with Hilda because she felt that maybe she was holding on for some reason . So we sat down together and talked with my mom . After realizing that Hilda didn 't understand hospice , the nurse explained to her that hospice is called when a person has less than six months to live . Upon hearing this she looked at me and then the nurse and then she started to cry realizing that she was going to die . The nurse told her , " I am not telling you this to hurt you but to help you . You don 't have to say anything but your daughter might have something to say . " The nurse then looked at me and said , " Do you want to say something to your mom ? " I looked at her and said , " Mom , I love you so much . I am so happy you are here with me and I can take care of you . I need to tell you that I know we had some hard times but you need to know that I forgive you and love you . " My mom started to cry and just stared at me . The nurse gave us such a gift . My mom looked relieved and I was able to talk to her more after the nurse left . She looked at me as her eyes said sorry and reached out for me and said I love you followed by a kiss . I felt so free for the first time . I was able to say that I truly forgave her for everything and she looked at peace . For the next few days she laid in bed with a smile on her face like she was relieved and had truly found peace for the first time in her life . The nurse felt Hilda would pass any time now but my mom seemed to be holding on to something , I really believe it was that she truly found peace . Starting on Friday she started to have some pain in her chest so we started medicating her to help with the pain . By Saturday she was sleeping more and complaining of more pain . I called the weekend nurse and she came out and told me it was time to start the morphine . The nurse felt the time was very near . That night I had to start her on Morphine and other meds every hour . It was a long night . Sean took over at 7 AM so I could sleep . When I woke up at 12 and walked in a room she was making a noise that seemed to say , " Where have you been ? ? ? ? " The nurse came by and again was shocked that she was still going . Later that afternoon the health aid care giver and I were there when my uncle called . My mom and him have not talked in eight years . He asked if I could put the phone up to her ear so he was able to say his goodbyes . I was trying to think what else was she holding on for . Then I felt that maybe she needed to make peace with my dad even though there marriage had been over for 33 years . Maybe there was still something there she needed to have closure on ? You know , they say that people can hear you even though they are not conscious . I always had a hard time believing that . I thought it was just something people say to make you feel better . Well , my mom had a heart monitor on her finger and her heart rate had been consistently 144 to 154 for hours . I texted my dad saying it was the end if he wanted to call he could . When he did , I put the phone up to my mom 's ear and her heart rate dropped to 90 . The care giver and I looked at each other in shock ! When my dad was done I pulled the phone away and her heart rate went back up to 154 . I told my dad what happened and he asked to talk to her again and as soon as he started to talk her heart rate went back down to 90 . After he was done she had another change downhill . I truly believed she could hear everything . After that the nurse , aid , kids , and I sat around looking at old pictures sharing stories and laughing . The aid gave her a bath and we put a dress on her . I asked the nurse again how long she thought ? ? ? I was shocked she was still going . I then remembered what the other nurse said to me - " Sometimes a person wants to die alone and she might wait for you to leave . " My biggest fear was for her to die alone since alone is how she felt her whole life ! But it was 9 : 30 and the nurse said we should all leave the room and see if that is what she is waiting for . So everyone left but I stayed behind to say goodbye . I was sitting next to her and this is what I said , " Mom , I love you so much , I am so grateful we had this journey and you allowed me to be here with you . Thank you for choosing me and adopting me . I am lucky to have you as a mom . I respect your wishes if you would like to die alone , however , I want to give you one last chance … . . If you want me to be here and hold your hand til the end you need to give me a sign to stay . " Just after I said that her breathing changed significantly so I moved to the other side of the bed and rubbed her head and held her hand saying it was OK to go and please be free , I will be OK . I said that over and over as she took her last six breaths of air . She gave me the last thing I wanted for her : to not die alone . Thank you for being on this journey with me . It is hard to lose your mom but also hard to be in the role of a caretaker for three months . This journey has been a wild ride . I am truly grateful . My biggest fear was she would die and we would not have closure . I got more than I could have ever expected . I thank my friends and family for their support and most of all I thank the Heartland Hospice staff . Because of them my nurse gave me gifts I never would have received . I tried to blind myself of my abilities many years ago . It worked well , though not completely blocking everything out . I decided about a year ago to accept and embrace my abilities . Once I did , I felt a happiness , a knowing that this is what 's been missing from my life . But , I still have a block and I can 't figure out what it is . I 'm feeling an ache , as though something is within reach but I 'm not able to touch it . Any advice or sense of the direction I need to take or what the block is ? Thank you for sharing your story ! I can relate to it so much as it hits a familiar cord in my soul . I remember being a little girl and having experiences . I shut them off as a child because I did not have anyone to help me understand . With situations like this , as time goes on you feel different from others and try to fit in any way you can . It is almost like you conform who to what others want you to be . I feel for you that you worked so hard to be something that never fit for you . There were times when you turned off your gifts and you had to do things that might not have been in true alignment with who you are . It put you in situations that were dangerous for you . As you slowly started to see the light and realize that this was not who you truly were , your spirit slowly started to awaken . Tuning into your life to see what the block might be , I feel that you have some areas in your life that feel like you still have not forgiven yourself and others . There is some healing that needs to be done . Now I know you have done a lot of work , but there is still some areas , like with your parents . The block is that you are not allowing yourself or giving yourself full permission to be in your power and allow yourself to be true to you ! You are well on your way so please do not get discouraged . I feel that you are breaking down this block and what I want you to do is reflect back to different situations in your life that you felt less than or when you felt that you could not be in your power . Start from the beginning until now . As you look at the different situations that come up , what you want to do is consider what you could have done to be empowered or to have had a different experience . Doing this allows for subtle energy shifts that actually heal the situation in your own personal vibration . This will take time but as you do this work you will break the block and be complete in your gifts ! Stay strong ! July 11 , 2012 By Melissa Frei Leave a Comment Dearest Melissa , Thank you for this space to express my feelings . I read all these posts and could relate . I am like okkkay this is too coincidental that I could relate with you on the doggie posts and being stuck . We had to put our beloved puppy of 16 years also back in September and still feel so sad . Buster was my first pet and he was such an awesome dog . He was like my baby , as God didn 't have children written in my books , at least not yet , perhaps soon ? Only time would tell . Buster was the kewlest loving passionate dog anyone could ever ask for . I know he is with me always and I think about him a lot . I ask him to tell me how it is up there in heaven and what he does during the days and nights and give me a sign that he is a okayyyy and still watching over us . Thank you for any healing insight . First of all thank you for letting me connect with Buster . You 're right , he is pretty cool ! As I started to tune into his energy , it was funny because he sat down , cocked his head to the right , his left ear perked up higher than the right and his eyes looked deeply at me and spoke a thousand words . Buster was definitely here to help . I feel like he helped people that were nervous . For example , if you had someone come over to your house that was worried , anxious or nervous , he would sit in front of them and try to energetically balance them out . He was / is truly gifted with this . It was his goal to help spread calm and peace to everyone he encountered . This was his first time coming here as a dog . He was so excited to come into your life as you both taught each other and learned together . You both have a great past life connection and I can also say that this is not the last life that you will be connected . He is very much around you . I feel that he is also a guide for you and working with you and others to help create a balance and release anxiety . I believe that all spirits have jobs on the other side . I feel like Buster is helping others cross over . More specifically he is helping spirits that are afraid of transitioning to the other side . He is helping them to feel safe and calm to let their spirit go . He is truly amazing and working hard still helping mankind . The signs that he says that he shows you are moving things around or knocking then off a table . He also says that he plays your favorite song . He says he is here to support you , so please call on him whenever you need his help and support . He is doing AMAZING ! He loves you ! In December I lost someone that I loved very much and I miss him . I speak to him daily and I often write him letters . My question is , does he know ? Can he hear me ? We had a problem in our relationship before he passed and I did not get to say good - bye to him , his death was sudden and I know that he was unhappy the day he passed . I need him to forgive . Is this possible ? I have found Jesus through his death however and I am studying the bible . My grief is less because of Jesus being in my life . I want to start off by saying I am so sorry for your loss . It is so hard when we lose someone that we care for . We all have our own way that we process the passing and it is hard not to start searching for answers , but please allow yourself to feel the feelings of the loss . It can be hard to do but someone once said to me " Melissa , your feelings can 't kill you , only your actions " I feel so drawn to tell you this and that it is OK to feel the feelings behind this loss and it is OK however you are grieving ! Let me address the question " Does he know and hear you ? " YES ! He is hearing everything you are saying to him , and what you are writing to him . He is all around you surrounding you with love and healing . A lot of times we talk and talk and so it is only common to wonder if anyone is really listening ? Well , yes , and continue to talk to him and write to him . I am going to give you an exercises to do : This is an Automatic Writing Exercise in two parts : Part 1 - This is a great way to communicate with our loved ones . Start off by getting in a relaxed position and have pen and paper with you . Take some deep breaths so you can relax . Next , you will write your loved one a letter , whatever you want , whether it is something heavy on your mind , advice or even closure . After you are done writing your letter , you have a choice as to what to do next . You can immediately start the part 2 or you can walk away until you feel ready to do part 2 . Part two - Sit and get in a relaxed position , take some deep breaths and call upon your loved one . You will wait until you feel their presence then when you are ready you will start to write a letter back to yourself from your loved one ! This is a great exercise and the key is to practice and have FUN ! Just remember that you are not alone and your loved one is with you , so continue to remain open . The last thing that I get around this is I feel that one of your symbols from him is quarters ! So just know that when you find quarters they are signs from above ! My beloved dog , Jack , passed away three years ago . He was sixteen years old and the love of my life . I miss him every day although I know his Spirit is always with me . I dream of him often and I talk to him all the time and always when I am cooking ! He used to sit in the kitchen and watch me cook and now , whenever I cook , I always end up accidentally dropping some food I know that is a ' wink ' to him that that food is his ! I keep his ashes on a shelf in my living room . I wrapped his collar around the urn . In the past few weeks I have come home twice to see his collar on the ground in front of the shelf . This is very odd since the collar is literally wrapped around the urn and cannot easily fall off . Any insight into why this is happening ? I feel it is a sign from him . Am I right ? I want to start off by saying thank you for allowing me to connect with Jack , he is amazing . He is such an old soul with whole lot of spunk . You know the one thing that I have learned by communicating with animals is that they are all around us . They usually stay with us when they pass away until they make their way back into our lives . There is a special connection that we carry with our pets ; they come into our lives to teach us whatever we need to learn at that time . When they pass they continue to stand by our sides . The really great thing is that you can still utilize them in that matter and make the connection . I have found that our pets come into our lives several time throughout our current lifetime . You feel that Jack has a message for you and you are spot on ! I feel that he communicates with you all of the time and I feel that he still sits in your kitchen while you are cooking . But yes there is a bigger message . I feel that he is saying to you : I know that you have thought about getting a new pet , you think how much you miss me and then get filled with sadness and think , " I don 't want to go through that again " . " I know you are in a place of vacillating back and forth . My message to you is that I am ready to come back into your life when you are . I have been trying to let you know that I am ready . There is no pressure as you know when you need to do it ; I just want you to know I am ready . " Thank you Jack 's mom for letting me experience him , he is ready to come back into your life ; however you have to feel 100 % ready to have that happen again . He will not be the same temperament as your Jack was but it will be his spirit . Time will tell but just trust and know in your heart when you are ready , and when you are ready to go for walk he will be there ! My question has to do with my guy Mike . I have known him for three years and he is married so our friendship / relationship is not based on just sex but a bond and trust we have for each other . I don 't want to influence him in any way to leave his wife , that has to be his choice and in his time . Do I wait or go ? My heart says wait , hang in there . My head tells me are you nuts ! Where does his heart stand with me ? And what does he really want ? What do I need to learn while I am waiting ? When I read this I definitely heard is that you are indeed " waiting " for this man because he is not available right now , nor is he in a position to be open for you in a relationship . But when I say to you that he is not available what I mean is that , yes , he might be married but that is not why he is unavailable . So lets shine some light on him . I feel that he is unavailable in all of his relationships be it his marriage , with you , friends or family . He is a person that has a hard time making a commitment because he is afraid he will loose something if he commits . Why I feel this is important is because we need to take you out of the picture so you can see what he is going through and how he shows up in life . He feels like if he makes drastic changes in thinking it will solve problems but it never does . No matter what he thinks it does not hit the root of the issue for himself . I feel like one day he will make a choice for himself that is productive without spinning his wheels . I have the hope that he will get clear with himself and realize that he has to find his own answers to peace and happiness . I feel that he does care about you and that he is as authentic as he can be with you . I also feel that you give him something that he is not able to receive from anyone else . There is a great connection between the two of you . However , it is a safe feeling that he has with you while he is unavailable . He does not have to worry about the commitment thing with you so you are safe . The reason I say this is because if he leaves his relationship , you need to make sure he has worked on himself or else he will recreate the same thing with you that he had with his wife . What do you need to learn ? You need to ask yourself why you are putting your life on hold . Is there a safety you find with him because he is unavailable ? I feel that you have a trend of dating men that are emotionally unavailable . So I feel what you need to learn during this time is what you truly want in life . What are you worth to yourself ? Allow yourself to feel that your head and your heart and your gut are all in alignment . I feel like you need to look at your part in this waiting game and heal your past relationships . If he is ready or if you choose to let someone else in , you need to have your side of the street clean and be ready for an amazing relationship . You are worth it ! You both are amazing people , but you each need to heal your own lives and clean up both of your " baggage " before you can move on . The gift is that you both have an opportunity to heal and work on yourselves . Once the work is complete you can make clean decisions and potentially move in a GREAT direction . In 1993 my grandmother had a stroke and fell into a coma that she did not recover from . I flew to Ohio to join my family at her deathbed . I brought with me most of the jewelry that she had given me . It included 3 rings , a necklace and a pair of earrings . I wore them during the week I was there , during which , she died at her home , with all of us family surrounding her , talking to her and holding her hands . Upon my return home , as I unpacked , I found that my jewelry was gone . I do not remember taking it off in Ohio , or packing it for the flight home . It was just gone . All the jewelry that I 'd brought with me wasn 't gone , just the finer items that Grandma Blanche had given me . WHAT HAPPENED TO MY JEWELRY ? It has been the big , heart - wrenching mystery of my life for the past 20 years . Please can you enlighten me on this matter ? WOW ! When I read this I had a lot of strong emotions . First , I felt how amazing it was that you were all able to be there with your grandmother . The love that I felt around the whole family being together was magical and the support amazing . She acknowledges that she had so much fear in her passing but that the united front that the family had formed helped her let go and cross over . She wants to really acknowledge that and say thank you ! As far as the jewelry , I can feel the energy of it on your body during that time . I also feel that there was a female there at that time that feels younger and not on a great path at the time . I get that she has addiction problems . I also feel that there was a lot of jealous energy around her as well . I hear the name ' Marie ' as I am typing this message . The day before you left I feel that the jewelry did come off . I know that you said that you do not remember taking it off , but I felt that you did . I felt that it was off over night . Now I also keep hearing a Thursday night around this as well . I feel that this women / girl took the jewelry . I feel that she took it for the money that she could receive for it . I also see that it was all in a spot on a little dark brown table / nightstand . I know this is a lot of information , but let it sink in and see how it feels . Another thing you might want to try and do is before you go to bed , write down on a piece of paper " What happened to the jewelry ? " . Allow yourself to experience and remember in your open dream state ! I hope this helps . I do feel that unfortunately the jewelry was taken to a pawn shop . The final message that I feel from your grandma is , " It is OK that it is gone . You have a special part of me in your soul and spirit ! You have something that nobody could ever take . I ask you to remember the time that was spent between you and I , like when you were a little girl playing dress up and putting lipstick on . Those are the memories we will always have ! " I met him at church - through my church 's pet ministry where they save animals and then bring them out at the end of a service … almost 2 years ago , when he was about 7 months old . He was named Rocky already and really is adorable . There were a few signs that made me pay attention . The problems are with other dogs , and his obsessive , high energy play that keeps us from the dog parks . Even when walking ( on leash ) he 'll want to lurch out or bark at some people and most dogs . I am going to address these behavior problems with a trainer , tool , but just thought I 'd share . You know , when we come across a pet we often look at them and wonder " How did you find me ? " Do they choose us or do we choose them ? I find that the path of our beloved pets might be as simple as we are the the person to help them find their home , we may have had many past life connections or we just wanted a companion and found each other . In the case of your Rocky , I feel like there iss a mix of reasons , so lets start out with your connection with him . I feel like you both needed each other at that time he came into your life and I feel that this is the first time this lifetime is the first time you have connected . Rocky had been tossed around in his short amount of time and I do not feel that he was abused , however , I do feel that he never really had any stability in his life . He needed to have a rock , a person that was patient , kind and loving to be able to work with him to be who he truly is . I also feel that he was taken from his mother and his litter mates too soon . As far as why you … well you have such a gentle soul and spirit ! Plus , this is an important project for you as well . I feel that about 6 months before you found each other that you had a loss and a big transition . . it feels as though you had / have a void . So now he came into your life ! He is a project for you in the sense that you can heal from that void as well as have a great pup ! Here is why he has problems : Like I said earlier , I feel like he was taken from his litter mates too soon so he never really learned how to be in a pack as well as how to interact with other dogs . In such a short amount of time being moved and taken from his mom he became extremely scared which in turn makes him a " Fear Biter " or one who reacts aggressively out of fear . I feel the training would be great for him , but I will also give you some tool 's too ! 1 . Dog parks are not good for dogs ! There are many reasons dog parks are not good . Mainly you are asking strange dogs to fit in a " different " pecking order each time they go to the park . Second , you are trusting that the other owners are responsible and all the dogs will get along . Imagine that you bring Rocky to the park , you are already nervous because of how he acts with others , then you have the energy of all the people there who are nervous or had a bad day and so on . So we have theses sensitive creatures all trying to " play " in all this energy , it is not good . So I say keep him out anyway ! 2 . His is obsessive because he needs to channel that energy ! First I would say that he needs to go on at least 2 LONG walks a day . He is bored and anxious so it comes out as obsessive . He needs to be " working " . He needs to feel like he has a part to play in life ! You can play games with him like hiding hot dogs pieces throughout the house and let him find them . 3 . Work with him on the leach . Keep cut up tiny hot dog pieces with you and have him sit when other dogs come up with people . When he sits give him the hot dogs . This will all take time , so you need to be the pack leader to help guide him . I really feel that this is the time for you to also heal yourself ! You will be able to heal that part of you that went missing . You both are on an amazing path together ! It will take time as well as trust . He chose you because he knows that you are his pack leader and you are the one who will help him be able to live a strong and healthy life ! I want to also tell you to not don 't get discouraged as it is important for you to stay strong and trust that he has an amazing purpose in your life ! He will also have a strong and lovely impact on others . I feel like he will become your side kick ! He needs to have trust and know that you are committed to him and that is why I say do not get discouraged because he can feel that ! You are both on an amazing path so stay strong ! ! ! ! Why is it that the death of a parent so often triggers bitter family issues ? I have seen this on several occasions . The most recent was with my aunt and uncle . When my uncle passed his son stopped communication with his mother and sister and actually took them to court over the will . Since I stay in contact with his family , he does not talk to me and will only email if he needs to know something . We used to be as close as a brother and sister . I know this is not the only family to suffer from this type of situation after a death . Any insight would be appreciated . Thank you This is a great question . It is funny how when we are in the process of losing a loved one families come together and even unite in solidarity , however , when when the loved one actually passes it can be like someone flipped a switch and there is a WAR ! 75 % of the Mediumship readings I do clients share a story that is exactly like yours so I was so excited to look at this as it is so common . I decided to channel my guides and ask them to answer your question : " This is a great lesson for you all , the human attachment to each other is amazing to watch . You love each other , hate each other , are jealous , betray , honor … . you do so many things with and to each other . The hardest thing for you to do is that which you do not do often enough - unconditionally love and forgive . " I speak of this because when we look at the son and father in question we see that they had a struggle in life together as did the mother and son . There where many hurts the son had . Now imagine all that resentment inside of you and how you might feel owed for having not been valued or loved and having endured a lot of hate . When his father died he had an array of emotions - he was happy , sad , devastated and mad . All the anger and feelings he had toward his father came to the surface . He had these same feelings toward his mother doubling the effect . Since this was an unresolved issue for him at the time of their death , and he sat with the guilt and resentment , he took the hatred and anger out on others … the family . " " It is best to look at it like this : If you leave things in your life unresolved with others it can stay with you forever . It is best to resolve situations around you especially with family . When you experience the death of a family member every human emotion possible comes to light . Those emotions mix with unresolved relationships and you get fighting over money , property or whatever the human thinks they are " owed " . Filed Under : Dear Melissa In a Beautiful Urn , she rests . . . May 11 , 2011 By Melissa Frei Leave a Comment In a Beautiful Urn , she rests … Dear Melissa ! I have a question . When a loved ones passes and they are cremated , is it a coincidence which family member 's house the remains end up staying at . So I , out of our family just ended up with my loved ones ashes in a beautiful urn that was created for her out of porcelain and hand painted , but I am curious if there is a particular reason if she / my family member that passed chose to be here at my home in her urn ? Thank you , WOW , what an amazing question ! Before we get started I have to tell you that I took a look at the amount of energy that is around you and it is absolutely beautiful . This is the first time that I have ever been asked this question , so I sat with it and meditated on it for 6 days . I know it sounds like a lot but what I wanted to do was to go very deeply into my communication with my spiritual team on the other side to get the answers to this question ! " People often wonder what happens to the spirit in the crossing over process , whether the spirit cares if they are cremated or buried . It is simply up to the humans . Once the spirit is free from the human body it no longer has attachment to the physical body , the choice to cremate or bury is up to the loved ones . It is for the human and what they need in their life for closure . " " Your situation is different . There is a connection between you and the spirit that goes way back . You both are so deeply connected by the bond of the gifts you posses . You two are more similar than you may think . She is here in spirit form to help you connect . She helped the urn come to you for a reminder to you . You have great gifts inside , you have passions that you are afraid to follow and she is here to help you navigate through any fears and live your passions . You will feel her presence around you as she is now here to help guide you . The place where she rests is in your home for you to have a reminder ! " I hope this helps . You have a great gift and from what I experienced during my channeling session , your life is just beginning ! You can call upon her to help you in your life ! START living your dreams ! Don 't be afraid ! You have support ! Essential Oil Diffusers Essential Oil for December PURCHASE HERE ! JOYFUL BLEND - " The Oil of Bliss " will assist you in raising your vibration , elevating your mood , bringing a … Read More . . . |
I was , to put it mildly , sexually precocious . By the time I was 13 years old , I was jerking off three or more times a day , and trying ( desperately ) to peak into the clothes of every female I got near . I sort of had a girl friend , Stacy , who was a year older than me . Our parents had been trading baby sitting since we were little , so we had been thrown together every week or so for years . We were good friends , but we sledom had play dates separate from the sitting . Anyway , a year ago , Stacy started sprouting titties about the same time I discovered the toy in my pants . A few months ago , on one of the few occasions we were left alone together , we somehow ended up necking . I was a bit shy , so even though there was a lot of rubbing of bodies , and much saliva exchanged , not much else happened . Since then , we 've had a number of short sessions , which were usually less than relaxed because of a nearby parent . In the one longer session we had , I got as far as getting my hand inside her bra . She seemed to be enjoying it a lot , but then I came in my pants . I got all flustered and embarrassed , and then my dad reappeared , so we had to stop anyway . Stacy and I talked a lot about wishing we could spend a whole day kissing and ' stuff ' without worrying about being interrupted . Even though I 'd get a boner if I saw the tiniest bit of cleavage , I always thought of Stacy when I beat off . I had been feeling for a long time that I didn 't need a sitter . But if I told my parents that , then I would never see Stacy , since we went to different schools . So when they told me they had hired Nina for the evening when Stacy 's family was out of town , I didn 't complain . At least it was a girl , and maybe I 'd be able to get a look down her shirt or something . As you 'll see it turned out better - and worse - than that . To start with , Nina arrived clad only in a two piece bathing suit . She had just come from her after school job as a life guard , and said that her bag had been accidently locked in the office . My mom gave her a bathrobe , but I already had a hard - on . I mean , I 'd seen lots of girls in bikinis , but somehow it was different when one was in my house . Even though she was pretty much flat chested , she was in such good shape , that I was mesmerized just watching her walk around . And what she lacked up front , she made up for in the rear ; I 'd become enamored of round girl bottoms , probably because Stacy had one , and Nina 's was just as good or better . Shortly after my parents left , we ended up on the sofa in front of the TV . I kept sneaking peeks at her , day dreaming about feeling her up , or kissing . She had a small mouth with thin lips , dark brown eyes , and short black hair loosely curling around her head . I liked it , but she somehow looked intimidating . The fact that she had only said about two sentences to me didn 't help . After a while , she slouched down , and the robe fell open . I immediately noticed that her swim suit bottom had stretched up around her crotch , and I could see the outline of her pussy . The fabric was so tight , that I could see where her pubic hairs made little humps in it . I put my arm across my lap , so I wouldn 't make a tent in my pants . After a few minutes , I had to get some relief . I got up , mumbling something about going to the bathroom , and was already rubbing my dick through my shorts as I walked down hall . Although I ALWAYS locked the door when I beat off , apparently I was so excited about Nina 's camel toe that I forgot . Yeah , you know how this ended ; She must of watched me leave , and could tell what I was doing , even from the back . It didn 't occur to me until long afterwards to wonder why she followed me , and then just barged in without knocking . And of course , I was cumming just when she appeared . I screeched , and jumped two feet in the air , jizz flying everywhere . Including - of course again - a big ole glob on Nina 's chest , right between her pancake tits . I yanked up my boxers , went for my shorts , but tripped and fell on my face instead . I totally freaked out ; " Please , oh god , I 'm so sorry , oh please , don 't tell , please , please , I 'll do anything , I 'm so sorry ! ! " Well , you get the idea ; pretty pathetic . I had my face buried in the bathroom rug the whole time , and it finally occurred to me that Nina hadn 't said a word . " Oh NO ! " I thought , " Did she run out ? ! ? I 'm sooo screwed . . . " But when I looked up finally , she was just leaning against the door frame , with her a bored look on her face . " Good . Now listen to me closely , little Jimmy Harper ; If you do not want this ' incident ' reported to your parents , then you will do exactly as I say . And I mean EXACTLY , or I will make you very , very sorry . Do you understand me ? " " OK . First , you 're going to answer some questions . And don 't lie to me ! I 'll know if you do , and you will be punished , understand ? " ' Yes ! " I yelped , then , " No ! I mean , I touched Stacy 's boobs , and came in my pants ! " If a person could die of embarrassment , I 've have been gone right then . Instead all I could do was cringe waiting for her next question . But all I heard was a snort . I glanced up , and saw why ; she was trying not to laugh at me . I didn 't know if that was good or bad , so I just buried my face in the rug again . After a minute , I heard her shift around , and take a breath after biting back her laughter . " Ok , so you 're a horny little fuck . Hm . Maybe we can have little " adventure . ' " I leapt up , and licked it off . Ew , ew , ew . I started to turn to the sink to spit it out , but Nina grabbed my chin , hard . " Good boy , " She said , letting go . " Now , let 's go to your room . " And she stalked off down the hall . I trailed behind her , scared half to death . She stopped just inside the door , looking around . " Guess this is ok . " She turned to face me and continued , " Now listen up , jerk wad , I 've had this stupid swim suit on all day , and it 's starting to chafe , so I 'm going to take it off . That does not mean I want to get all lovey dovey , especially not with a little peckerhead like you , understand ? " I nodded , and she started wiggling out of the bottoms . I had no idea what I should do , so I stared at the floor . As I watched her feet stepping out of the bottoms , she said meanly , " And if you do have a problem , I don 't want to know about it - just remember to lock the door next time . " I blushed as a moment later , her bikini top landed beside the bottoms . Despite my fear of Nina , my dick started to harden again . " Hm . Well that will have to do , " she said climbing onto my bed . " Get your ass over here , and give me a back rub . And no funny stuff ! " This was getting crazy . I had a naked girl on my bed , a full hard - on at this point , and all I could do was rub her back ? It wasn 't fair , it just wasn 't fair . " What ? Oh , sorry , yeah , back rub . " And I leaned over the bed , and started working on her neck . It was an awkward angle to work from , but I was too freaked out and aroused to figure it out , so I just did the best I could as I worked down her back . On top . Right . Now my stupid dick was starting to ache . She was obviously torturing me , but I didn 't know how to get out of it , and at the same time , wasn 't sure I wanted to . The bed was too narrow to kneel beside her , so I gingerly straddled ass . I was afraid to sit , so I stayed perched above her as I continued massaging . It was so much different from doing my mom 's or dad 's back . I could feel each muscle as I worked my way down , and that made my poor pecker just throb . When I got to her tail bone , I started back up . " Uh , ok . " Not really . At the thought of rubbing her bare ass , my cock became painfully hard . I couldn 't stand it . Worse , I started to scooch down , but she had spread her legs , so I ended up kneeling between them with a perfect view of her little pink asshole and her cunt . Her cunt with a sparse covering of jet black hairs , and a wet sheen along the lips . It really , really wasn 't fair ! I started massaging her butt . Suddenly , Nina began making little furry sounds , and pushed her ass up into my hands . I desperately needed to jerk off , but I didn 't dare even ask . I massaged closer and closer into the area between her legs , and her noises became louder , and the pushing became more insistent . I was starting to panic because I didn 't know what to do ; she had warned me against " funny stuff , " but she seemed to be inviting it at the same time ! Then suddenly she slumped flat to the bed . " Shit , shit , shit . This isn 't working . " I tensed , waiting for her to yell or hit me . Instead , she hopped up off the bed , and started for the door . " What are you waiting for , fuck head ? " she called over her shoulder . " C ' mon ! " " Yeah , no shit , Sherlock . So what ? It 's dark ; nobody can see us even if they did look outside . Now quit fucking around and get out here ! " " SHIT ! " she hissed , as her ass came into contact with the metal . " Colder than I thought . " " This is a bad idea , I . . . " " Just shut up you stupid fuck , " she whispered angrily . " Crap ; maybe I made a mistake . Maybe I should just tell you ' rents about the bathroom , and let you fry . " " Dammit , I said ' LICK , ' not ' TICKLE , ' dumbass . " And grabbing my hair , she crammed my head against her gushing wet pussy . She immediately began grinding against me , fucking herself with my face . " LICK ME ! " she hissed , yanking my hair . I licked . I licked all over ; I had no idea what I was doing , and I was having trouble getting my nose clear of her hole long enough to get a breath . Nina started grunting and squirmed harder against me . Suddenly , her legs whipped up off the ground , and locked together behind my neck , squashing my poor face even harder against her steaming hole . She let go of my hair , and grabbed the sides of the slide . Her thrashing became so wild that I was afraid she would break my neck - if I didn 't suffocate first . More or less accidently , I jabbed my tongue into her hole . She arched up off the slide , and as we toppled sideways onto the grass , I heard muffled squealing . Glancing up , I saw her biting down on her hand , and suddenly realized that she must be having an orgasm . Despite the beating she was giving me , I still had a boner which was now harder than ever . We crashed to the ground , and she continued to buck against my face for another minute as her orgasm subsided . When she finally let go of my poor aching head , we were both gasping and drenched in sweat , despite the cool night air . " Woo ! Yeah . . . In fact , I think you deserve a reward . " And with that , rolled me onto my back , and unceremoniously yanked my shorts and boxers down to my knees . My boner immediately popped straight up . " What are you . . . " but before I could finish my question , she was enthusiastically sucking my cock . I didn 't last thirty seconds . She giggled around by pecker as I shot my load into her mouth , and kept sucking until every drop was gone . It felt so fantastically good , I couldn 't believe it . I instantly forgot all the mean things Nina has said and done , and was about to declare my undying love for her , when she abruptly sat up . My mostly limp pecker popped out of her mouth . " God , are you getting hard again ? C ' mon boner boy , we better get cleaned up before your ' rents get home . " I just turned and ran to my bedroom . I suddenly remembered how scared I was of her , and I wasn 't sure I wanted another adventure . However , that didn 't stop me from beating off after I got in bed . I came ten minutes later , and looked up to see Nina watching me from the doorway . I was horribly embarrassed ; I 'd spent the last year avoiding getting caught masturbating , and she 'd caught me twice in one evening . I cringed , waiting for whatever mean thing she was going to do to me now , as my face burned with shame . " Sweet dreams , " she gurgled ; apparently , she had not swallowed my jizz yet . Just then we both heard the gravel crunching in the driveway . Nina smiled , picked up her swim suit from the floor , and wiggled into it as she went to greet my parents with a mouthful of my cum . I didn 't see Nina again for a few weeks after that first night she sat for me . I jerked off more than ever - no surprise there , I guess . Stacy came over one evening , but as usual we couldn 't get any privacy . We necked a little in the living room , but both my parents were 10 feet away in the kitchen . So we couldn 't do anything , and popped apart every time we heard any noise that might be them coming in . That just made it worse . Nina had given me my first blow job , but she was also scary as hell . I wanted Stacy . Nina had been incredibly ugly to me , but she made out to my folks like we were best buds . She told mom and dad that I was a really special kid , and that she loved being my sitter , and she hoped they would call her again , and could she take me out for the afternoon some weekend , etc . , etc . For my part , it was hard ( in more ways that one ! ) not to pester my parents about when Nina could sit . Even though I was just 13 , I was smart enough to figure out that they would get suspicious if I did . So when they asked me how I liked her , I said , " Ok , I guess . " And when mom asked what we did , I actually started to get a woody just thinking about it , but I managed to keep a straight face when I said , " Oh , watched TV , talked , um , played some games . " Some games ! I had more sex in 2 hours that night than I 'd had since I started beating off a year ago , even if I was scared half the time as well . Finally , another chance came ; they hired Nina to watch me during a teacher work day . When they told me on Friday , I ran to the bathroom , and jerked off . Afterwards , I had the idea that I wouldn 't do it any more until Monday ; that I 'd sort of ' save it ' for Nina . That turned out to be hard . Very , very hard . . . I almost broke down several times , but I managed to keep my hands out of my pants . Monday morning finally arrived , and I woke up an hour early . I always had a boner when I woke up , but usually it went down while I was peeing if I didn 't beat off first . Today it didn 't ; I had a boner all morning , which was very weird when my mom hugged me good bye . But if she noticed that I was kind of leaning the lower half of my body away from her , she didn 't let on . Sheesh ! What ? I mean , I guess I didn 't expect her to fall on her knees and blow me , but I didn 't expect her to show up pissed off , either . " I . . . uh , sorry , I , I was just , it 's nice to see you again " I ran to the bathroom , and stood there while the tub filled , feeling peeved and sorry for myself . My pecker was limp for the first time all morning . I called to Nina when the tub was ready , and she came striding in , still clearly fuming . She started to pull the shapeless dress she was wearing off over her head , and then stopped . " What the hell are you staring at ! " I practically leapt out of the door . It slammed behind me , and I heard the door lock . I was near tears . I was one of those ' good ' kids who never get in trouble . I mean , nobody ever yelled at me , and she was treating me like I 'd killed her dog or something . After that , I heard an occasional swear word come from the bathroom , but that was all . It finally dawned on me that she wasn 't mad at me ; I was just a convenient target . I still felt pretty bad , though , and I was afraid of what she would do when she came out . I 'm short for my age to begin with ; most people assume I 'm like nine , even though I 'm thirteen . And Nina is not only a foot taller , but it 's also obvious that she works out . I just meandered around the house worrying all this for a while , then finally slumped in front of the TV . It was at least an hour later when Nina suddenly sat down beside me ; I 'd been spacing out , and hadn 't heard her come in the room . I cringed , expecting her to yell at me again , but she didn 't . " Alright . Alright . . . Look , let 's go to the mall . I want to do some shopping , and I 'll buy you an ice cream or something . How does that sound ? " " Yeah , really . " She turned and looked at me . " But don 't get used to it , little Jimmy Harper ! " She suddenly had an evil glint in her eye . " Remember , I 'm still in charge here , right ? " Adventure ? After the last " adventure , " I didn 't know if I wanted another one . But if there was another blow job involved . . . Besides , how much of an ' adventure ' could we have at the mall ? We went right to the ice cream place in the food court , even though it was only 10 in the morning . It shows you how boring my life was that I thought that was pretty cool . Then she insisted on feeding it to me with a spoon , which was really embarrassing , even though there was nobody around at the time . Nina told me to pretend I was enjoying it , or she 'd smear it on my face , and lick it off . I did my best , and fortunately she got bored with it after a few minutes and let me finish it myself . Then I followed her around while she looked at clothes . She chatted at me off and on , but I was starting to wonder if this is what it would feel like to be a younger brother with a bossy sister . Then I suddenly was her younger brother . Her annoying younger brother . . . We were in a department store , and I hadn 't realized we were heading for the women 's dressing rooms until we were almost there . Although she had a few blouses over her arm , we 'd spent the last 10 minutes in the underwear department , and I had a full boner going . Hey , I was just 13 , what do you expect ? Anyway , just as we were passing a cashier near the entrance of the dressing rooms , Nina suddenly whipped around and grabbed my arm . " YES , you 're going in with me ; I am NOT spending another half hour looking for you again , you little jerk ! " The cashier glanced up , and I was totally mortified ; What was she taking about , and why was she yelling at me ? ! ? " And don 't you peek , or I 'll smack you , I don 't care what mom says ! " I was starting to panic , but when I looked at her again , she was smiling , trying not to laugh . Duh ! It was all an act for the cashier so she could get me into the dressing room , but why ? She dragged me into the stall on the far end , and locked the door . " wha . . . ? ? ? ? " " Oh for chrissake , jimmy , for a smart kid , you can be really dense , now c ' mon , we only got a few minutes . " She was pulling my shorts down around my ankles . " Step out of ' em ! " Finally , the light came on ; Oh no . . . this must be the ' adventure . ' " But what if somebody comes in ? ! ? " " That 's what make it fun , stupid ! Now get your shirt off - I want to see my ' little brother ' naked ! " and while I did that , she pulled her dress off . Somehow , I wasn 't surprised that she had nothing on under it . She climbed up on the little bench built onto the dressing room wall , and began massaging her pussy with both hands . " Get over here and lick me . Hurry up ! We don 't have much time . " I did as I was told . I had been thinking about licking pussy a lot since last time , and so I was a little more prepared . I tried licking her pussy different ways ; up and down , side to side , fast , slow , etc . She definitely wanted fast , and responded when I dipped my tongue between her cunt lips , or licked her clit . Standing up , she could only wrap one leg around my back , so she couldn 't really crush me like last time . As she started to cum - she was biting on her hand trying not to squeal - I slid a finger into her cunt as far it would go , and focused my licking on her clit . That sent her over the top , and I think she pulled out some of my hair as she finished fucking herself on my face . " Oh shit , oh god ! " she whispered hoarsely , " that was so good ! Shit , where 'd did you get that trick from , you clever little fuck ? " ( My finger was still in her , and she was gently squirming on it . ) " Well , you keep thinking , but now it 's reward time ! Hop up here and change places with me ! " I did , and realized she had been watching me eat her out in the mirror . Now I could watch her suck me off ! Even though I was still extremely nervous about getting caught , that seemed pretty exciting . Sitting on the bench , Nina turned me sideways , so she could also watch . Remember that I had not beat off for three days , so once again , I came in about 30 seconds . Nina felt me getting ready to blow , and backed off my cock with her mouth open . I think she wanted to watch it squirt into her mouth , but her aim was off . Three days of cum gushered out , and went everywhere ; face , hair , tits , walls , floor , everywhere , probably , but in her mouth . I cringed , because she looked for a second like she was going to blow up at me . But then , looking around , she started to giggle , then laugh , then laugh really loud ! She fell over on the bench laughing , noticed her hand had landed in a glob of you - know - what , and laughed even harder . She grabbed my dick and squeezed it , which for some reason set her off again . I kept begging her to be quiet , and she finally calmed down to giggling and snorting , and sat up . Looking around , she grabbed one of the blouses she had come in with , and wiped her cunt juice off my face and chest . Then she used it to clean herself up , and the stall a little bit . By the time she was done , the shirt was wet and sticky . She balled it up , and stuffed it under the bench , then we got dressed , and left . I wanted to run , but Nina told me that we had to walk casually , if we didn 't want to attract attention . Getting out of that store was the longest five minutes of my life . She took me to a sub place for lunch . She sat next to me in a corner booth , and put a hand in my shorts while I ate , and played with my dick until I came in her hand . Then she spread it like mayo on her sandwich , which seemed incredibly gross . But it got worse ; she wanted me to take bites , and then push them into her mouth . I started to protest , but she said if I didn 't , she would take my shorts , and leave me there . So I did it , feeling slightly sick the whole time . Nina seemed to like sperm , but it was just too weird for me . I was also painfully aware of people peeking at what must have looked like a little boy frenching a teenager . We got back to my house about mid afternoon . Nina immediately stripped off her dress , and I immediately got another boner . " Jezis , you really are a horny little fuck , " she said , glancing at the tent in my shorts . " Well , you 'll have to jerk off or something , because I mainly want to get a shower and wash all your boy - gunk off me . " She started towards the bathroom , then called over her shoulder , " Come on , you too ; can 't have you smelling like cunt when your ' rents get home . " I got a big doofy smile on my face , and trotted after her , shedding clothes as I went . She decided to have a bath instead . She peed while we waited for the tub to fill . She saw me staring . " Guess you never saw a girl pee , huhn ? Well take a look - it 's just pee . " And she spread her legs and leaned back . Maybe it was just pee , but it made my dick harder . " Taste it , if you want " " Maybe some other time , " she said with a wicked grin . " I 'm done , now wipe me . With toilet paper ! Front to back . That 's it . Once more . Now unless you want to keep it , throw it in the toilet . " " uh , thanks ? " She laughed , climbed in the tub , and sat down . I wasn 't sure what I was supposed to do , so I just stood there with my boner sticking out . " What are you waiting for , dummy , an invitation ? C ' mon , get in . Sit ; No , the other way , I 'm going to wash your back . " And she did . It felt really nice . I didn 't even realize I 'd started idly sliding my hand up and down my boner under the water . But Nina noticed . " You 're back 's done . Now turn around so I can watch you jack off . " I stood up , and started yanking my dick . After a few minutes , I sort of got used to her staring at me , but it would have helped if she had been masturbating too . When I came , a glob went up in the air , and she tried to catch it . She missed , and just splashed us instead , and we both ended up giggling . Then she made me wash her all over , including her hair ( which had my dried up cum in it ) . I spent a little too much time on her little titties , and she told me to quit fucking around . I said sorry , but I was thinking that even though I 'd had my tongue in her pussy and my dick in her mouth , this was the first time I 'd touched her breasts . And the nipples had become hard immediately , which seemed to be contagious , since my pecker started coming back to life at the same time . " Sorry . It 's , well . . . you kind of help . . . " " Aw , what a sweet thing to say . Maybe I 'll give you a little present before I leave this afternoon . " We were sitting in the tub facing each other , and as she spoke , she started gently rubbing my cock with her feet . Then she chatted about other things , all the while stroking my sausage with her piggies . I was getting incredibly horny , but I didn 't dare ask her to do anything . Finally , in desperation , I asked her if she wanted to watch me jerk off again . " Thanks for offering , Jimmy , but not right now . Actually , your dad is supposed to be home soon , so we better get out . Now it 's time for you to dry me . " I did , and now my boner was starting to seriously ache . She left me to dry myself , and when I came out , she was standing by the front door . I was relieved to see that she had put her dress on , since the door was open . " Come here , Jimmy . There 's a nice breeze coming through the screen . " A little bell went off in my head ; I knew somehow that was an odd thing for her to say , but I went anyway . When I got to her , she dropped to her knees , and then yanked my shorts and boxers to my ankles . I went to cover myself , but she already had hold of my hard - on . She grinned her wicked grin . " They can only see you from the chest up because of the hedges , dumb - ass , so shut up and cum in my mouth this time . " And then she swallowed my dick . It felt great , but I felt a little sick when I realized Mr . Smith across the street was sitting on his porch . But he didn 't seem to be paying any attention to me , so after a minute I started to really enjoy the sucking and licking Nina was giving me . After a few minutes , I was ready to cum . Just then , I saw my dad 's car turn into the street . " My dad ! " I practically shrieked . But instead of moving away , Nina started sucking harder . I came as he pulled in , and then I pulled out . " He 's here ! Get up ! " I pulled up my shorts as quick as I could , even though I was still dribbling sperm . She stood up slowly , smiling . Then opened her mouth to show me my jizz still in it . Then she spread some around her lips with her tongue , and swallowed . " Well hi there , you two ! " I thought I was going to faint . Did he see anything ? " Hi Mr . Harper ! I was just asking Jimmy if he likes the new lip gloss I got today . What do you think ? " Even though my dad didn 't seem to suspect anything , I was practically shaking . How could Nina be so calm ? She 'd just been sucking me off ! She had my cum on her lips ! ? ! " Sure ! " I was delighted to have an excuse to get out of the room . I was already looking around in the bathroom when I realized I had never seen her with sunglasses . Then she was at the door . She pulled up her dress , and I could see shiny tracks from her cunt juice on her thighs . She jabbed two fingers into her pussy , and once more , roughly smeared the juice on my lips . " Until next time , Jimmy Harper ! " And then louder , " I guess they 're not here . " And she was gone . Nina took over my life , even though I had only seen her twice . The slide had been one thing , but I couldn 't believe the department store , or blowing me practically in front of my dad . I couldn 't think about anything else , and beat off every chance I got . I even did it once in the back of the car , sitting behind my mom , and that was really weird . And my parents were a little surprised when I started taking baths again , instead of showers . I always beat off at least twice when I did ; I could just picture her in the tub with me . 10 days had gone by , and I had not heard from her . Even though I was terrified of her , it was worth it for the sex . That day , Stacy had come to my school with the soccer team for a game . At the end , we managed a little petting time under the school bleachers . I 'd got my hand inside her bra again , and she was rubbing my pecker through my pants . She was also rubbing her pussy on my leg , although she had on a skirt , and , I assume , panties . Then they announced the busses were leaving and we had to stop . I had to wait till I got home to relieve my aching prick . I loved sucking face with Stacy , but it was awful at the same time ! Why couldn 't I have private time with Stacy instead of wacko Nina ? The next night , I was getting into bed , and had not bothered to put on my pj 's , since I was planning to beat off first . I 'd been thinking about Stacy , and I already had a hard - on . I pulled back the rumpled covers , and nearly leapt out of my skin when I realized that somebody was already there ! I turned around to see Nina with both hands over her mouth , choking with laughter . " It 's not funny ! " I hissed . She didn 't answer , just keep laughing . I went to punch her on the arm , but she grabbed my hand , and pulled me on top of her . I was still mad , but the feel of her skin on mine , my partially erect cock against her stomach , took all the fight out of me . At least she stopped laughing . " Trust me , my little worry wart , I could get in much , much worse trouble than you . But just lie still , and do what I tell you . If you 're good , we 'll have a little adventure , ok ? " " For you parents to go to sleep , dummy . Now shut up and lick . " I did as I was told . Within minutes , she was making her furry sounds , and my dick was achingly hard . She noticed . " Roll over a little bit , your stupid pecker is drilling a hole in my stomach . " I moved , and was rewarded with her hand gently stroking my cock . This was so different from the crazy shit she usually did . It was so . . . nice . " ' Yeah . " And we lay like that for a while , me half on top of her , kissing and licking her tits , and her kneading my pecker . She squeezed a bit harder at one point , and I impulsively bit lightly on one of her nipples . Her gasp told me she 'd liked it . We went on like that , her pulling on my cock becoming more insistent , me occasionally biting her nipples . And then ; " I 'm cumming , Nina . " She smoothly slid out from under me , and into a kneeling position , her lips closing over my cock . I stifled a groan of pleasure as my spunk spewed onto her tongue . She continued to lick and suck until I was limp . " Got something for ya . " Her words were slurred ; she hadn 't swallowed my cum . " Don 't move . And be quiet . " That sounded bad . Then she silently turned around , and sat on my chest ; God , was her cunt hot and wet ! I didn 't immediately register that she had also pinned my arms to my sides with her knees . Then she grabbed my ankles , and tucked one under each of her armpits . Bad was here . . . I was trapped with my bare ass sticking up in the air , pinned down by an occasionally insane girl twice my size . Not to mention we 're both naked with my parents five feet away on the other side of the wall . I gritted my teeth , waiting for what , I didn 't know - but I couldn 't take a chance on my parents hearing . Then I gasped when I felt something wet and warm drip on my asshole . She was spitting my cum on my asshole . Oh shit . . . " Shh ! Fun time , Jimmy . " Then she grabbed one of my asscheeks with one hand , and I felt a finger from her other hand swirling the cum around my butthole . Then her finger tip went in , and I very nearly succeeded in throwing her off , but she held me down . " NINA ! " I hissed as loud as I dared . " Asshole , it 's called an asshole . Now shut up , or I 'll fuck your stupid asshole with your baseball bat ! " and with that , she started jamming her finger deeper in . I was so clenched up , she had to really push . I was nearly in tears , I was so freaked out and humiliated . And it hurt ! But she kept working her finger into my asshole , and then started rubbing her pussy on my chest . After a few minutes , she had it in as far as she could . To make it worse , that made me feel like I had to pee really bad . But I didn 't dare say anything for fear she would do something worse . Suddenly she slid back a bit , and now her cunt was on my face . " Lick ! " she said , and started ass fucking me with her finger . I did what she said , and a few minutes later she started to cum . Suddenly , the finger was gone , and she jammed her face against my ass to muffle her squeals . I thought she was done torturing me , so I jumped when she stuck her tongue into my poor asshole . How much worse could this get ? ! ? Fortunately , she just wiggled it around in there for a minute , and finally backed off . She let my legs down , but continued to gently rub her cunt around on my face . Normally , I wouldn 't have minded , but at the moment , I was just scared to death of what she would do next . I also realized that my neck hurt from having all my weight on it for the last 10 minutes . Then she finally got off , and lay down beside me and started licking her juice off my face . I was so freaked out , it took me a minute to realize that she was licking me with the tongue that had just been shoved up my ass ! " I 'm serious , Jimmy . You have to do what I tell you , but I don 't want you really upset with me either . C ' mon . It 'll make it ok if you punish me , you 'll see . " Nope , I 'm dead serious . In fact , you have to do it , so get up . " She stood , and started pulling me out of the bed . I let her , too scared to resist . Nina flipped on the single overhead bulb . The garage was empty , since we never put the car in it . Nina went right to a shelf , and pulled down what turned out to be her backpack . She pulled out three long strips of cloth , tied a big knot in the middle of one , and then handed them all to me . I had no idea what she was doing , and watched warily as she got down on all fours on the cement floor . " Ok , see where my elbow and knee are touching ? Tie them together with one rag . " I bent to it . " Tighter ! That 's better . Now , go around to the other side , and tie me there . " " Nina , I don 't like this . . . " " Alright , now listen , and do EXACTLY as I tell you . The rag with the knot is a gag , so I don 't wake up the whole neighborhood . Put the knot in my mouth , and tie it tight around my head . NOT YET , stupid , I 'll tell you when . Then , there 's a piece of rubber fan belt in my pack . Go get it ! Now , you 're going to whip me 10 times with it , as hard as you can . " " Of course you didn 't . So it 's only fair that you make me cry . And besides , if you don 't , I 'll beat you till you REALLY cry , got it ? " " And do it hard ; if you don 't , I 'll know , and you better believe I 'll make you pay . Now put the gag on me , and get to work . And don 't forget to untie me when you 're done . Now , GET GOING ! " I tied on the gag , and got the fan belt , but I was scared shitless . The piece of fan belt was about two feet long , and the hard rubber had a surprisingly sharp edge . I 'd never even been in a fight , let alone hurt somebody on purpose . But I was now even more afraid of Nina 's revenge if I didn 't do it . I took a deep breath , and let fly . The belt landed squarely across her ass cheeks , and although I did not " put my back into it , " she flinched . But then her head whipped around , and she gave me such a murderous look that I immediately whipped her again , and much harder . I heard her screech into the gag , and she didn 't look back again . A bright red line appeared across her ass this time , and it upset me so much , I decided to get it over with as quickly as possible , and started flailing away . Around the fifth or sixth hit , all the anger and humiliation she had put me through somehow took over , and in blind frenzy , I started pounding her with all my might . She fell on her side a one point , trying to squirm away from the flying belt , but I was in such a rage I didn 't really notice . I hit her a lot more than 10 times , and when I finally came to my senses , I totally freaked out at what I done ; there were red welts all up and down her naked side , her back , her legs , and drops of blood oozing from a dozen cuts . She would have been sobbing loudly , if not for the gag , and suddenly I was crying too , way harder than I had in years . " I 'm sorry ! I 'm sorry ! I 'm so sorry Nina . " I kept saying it over and over through my sobs as I untied her . I don 't know what I expected her to do , but she just lay there curled on the floor , great shuddering sobs racking her body . Without really thinking , I crouched down beside her , and held her as best I could . We ended up both lying on the cold concrete , with her head on my shoulder . Eventually , both of our tears stopped . I didn 't know what to do or say . I was becoming increasingly afraid that Nina would suddenly get mad , and then give me a beating . So what she finally said totally surprised me . " Jimmy ? " We lay together a while longer , then she got up - gingerly - went to her backpack and pulled her clothes out of it . I got up too . Then with a lot of wincing and grunting that made me feel awful all over again , she pulled them on . She came over and hugged me gently , and then limped out the door and into the early morning darkness . I went up to bed , expecting to be up the rest of the night , but fell asleep instantly . I told my dad I was sick when he tried to wake me for school , and slept till noon . As I stepped into the shower , I realized that I had little spots of blood on my chest and arm , where she had been lying on me . I was nearly sick . It wasn 't until that night that I realized that Nina must have snuck into our house during the day completely naked , and hidden in my room . Although that would usually be an exiting thought , I didn 't even start to get stiff ; I was still horrified and feeling awful about what I 'd done to her . I couldn 't understand how I could do such a thing . At school the next day , the kids were talking about some high school girl who got beat up . There were all kinds of rumors like , a gang that did it , and that she got knifed . Every time one of the kids started talking about it , I felt sick all over again . It was one of the worst days I 'd ever had . Then when my mom and dad arrived to pick me up an hour before the final bell , I was sure they found out , and that I was going to jail . " Jimmy , there 's nothing wrong , but we need to talk about something right away ; that 's why we came to get you , honey . " That should have been reassuring , but I was still feeling panicky . I just said " ok , " and we drove to the house in silence . I followed them in , and mom patted the sofa beside her . Dad paced slowly about the room , like he did when he was trying to figure something out . " Oh Jimmy , you really like her don 't you ? " Mom held me while I cried . I wasn 't really sure how much I liked Nina , but I was crying because I 'd beat the crap out of her . Mom kept saying comforting things , which somehow made it worse , but I finally managed to pull myself together . " She says that somebody grabbed her , but she didn 't see them . But the police are pretty sure that her father did it , and she just won 't say so because she 's so afraid of him . It turns out that he did a lot of awful things to her , like locking her in a closet for days at a time , and stealing her money . There 's worse , but , um , you 're too young for that kind of ugliness . Anyway , he 's going to prison . Even if he didn 't give her that awful beating , he 's facing a number of child abuse and endangerment charges that will send him to jail for a long time . Now remember , Jimmy , you are not to repeat a word of this . Jimmy ? " " Jimmy , are you ok ? " The slight edge of panic in my mom 's voice brought me back . " Uh , yeah . . . yeah , its , I just can 't believe it , is all . But why are you telling me all this stuff ? " I cringed again , sure I was about to get in trouble , somehow . " Well , when she called the police yesterday morning , they took her right to the hospital . While the doctors were examining her , she kept asking for me . You wouldn 't know it , but I 've had a couple of very nice chats with that girl . She acts tough , but she very sweet , although god knows why considering what her father was doing to her . Anyway , the social worker assigned to her called , and I met with her and Nina at the hospital . Where I 'm going with all this is that the magistrate agreed with the social worker that Nina could stay with us for a while . " " What ? ! ? " I wanted to shout , ' You don 't know her ! she 's nuts ! She made me lick her pussy on the sliding board ! She jerked me off in a restaurant and made me feed it to her on a sandwich ! She put her tongue in my ass ! ! ! ' " What 's wrong , Jimmy ? I thought you 'd like the idea of helping her out . " But I couldn 't tell her what I was thinking , and I was too dazed to come up with a reasonable sounding excuse to keep Nina out of the house . So I went into ' good boy ' mode , and just told her that I was surprised , and sure , I thought that would be great if we could help , and like that . Inside , though , I was freaking out . Dad was talking ; " That 's settled then . You 're a good kid , Jimmy Harper . I 'll call the case worker , and we 'll go pick her up . " " Fine . Just gotta go . " That was a lie . I went to the bathroom and threw up . 20 minutes later , we were in the Child Protective Services lobby , chatting with Nina 's case worker . Well , they were chatting . I was just standing there in a daze . I thought I knew what had happened , but I couldn 't believe it . It seemed much more likely that Nina had manipulated my parents into taking her in so she could take her revenge on me at her leisure . Which she would probably do anyway , even if my wild idea was right . After a few minutes , they went into the case worker 's office , and Nina came out . She was wearing a loose sundress , and it was easy to see the welts and bruises on her right arm and leg . I could suddenly picture the other ones lining her backside , and I almost started to blubber again . But I was too drained out . And too scared . I glanced up at her , and then back at the floor . " Jimmy , I need to talk to you before they come out , but I , I can 't sit , you know ? So could you , um , please stand up ? " I stood . " Jimmy , I just want you to know that I 'm not mad at you . Not at all . Not only did you save me from my psycho dad , but . . . " She paused so long , that I finally looked up again ; she was crying ! " But , after I saw you in that rage , I . . . I kept asking myself how such a sweet , harmless kid could go crazy like that . " She paused again , gathering herself . " And suddenly I knew , it was because I had been so mean to you , just like my dad was to me , and I felt so awful . " then she cried quietly for a minute . " I 'm sorry , Nina . I , I didn 't know about your dad . I still don 't , but mom says he was , uh , not a nice man . " " No . No he isn 't . But look , I 'll never be able to tell you how sorry I am , and I wouldn 't blame you if you hated me . " " After what I did to you ? You don 't owe me anything , Nina ; nothing at all . I can 't ever forgive myself , I don 't , I don 't . . . " I bit my lip to keep from crying again . " Jimmy , Jimmy , listen ; It 's not your fault . I mean . . . look I also decided that I will always be honest with you , so I have to tell you something else , and it 's pretty bad . I set you up . " " Well , the whole thing was kind of weird ; you trying to make me mad , then insisting that I punish you . And it was awfully convenient that those rags and that … that belt were so handy . But I was so freaked out , that I didn 't think about it . Then when mom told me about your dad , I suddenly thought maybe you set the whole thing up to get away from him , but I couldn 't believe it . I still don 't ! Why didn 't you just tell somebody ? " " I was afraid nobody would believe me , and if he found out , it would have been a lot worse . But I though if I had black and blue marks , they would have to believe me , see ? Please . I didn 't mean to make you cry ; I just wanted you to be mad , so you would do it . Honest . Don 't tell . Please ? " She whispered so softly , I almost couldn 't hear her . " Thank you . " And she bent down and kissed me on the forehead . I was starting to feel a little better , but then the moment was broken ; " Nina , just . . . I was going to say make yourself comfortable , but that would be a silly thing to say , wouldn 't it ? Don 't worry , dear , we should only be a few minutes . " " Jimmy , we have the problem of sleeping arrangements . Because of her experience , Nina is afraid to be alone , and may be for a while . Not an uncommon response to what she went through . Your parents and I have a proposal , but let me emphasize that if you have any concerns or reservations about it , you have to say so . I want you to promise that you will be honest with me . This is very important . I think we may be asking too much of a 13 year old boy , but I 'll let your mother explain the idea , and you tell me what you think . " Mom turned to me . " Jimmy , there are only two options , since our home is so small . One is that Nina will sleep in my room with me , and your dad will bunk in with you . Nina doesn 't like the idea , because she would feel bad about pushing your dad out of his own bedroom . " " Jimmy , " said the case worker , " Before we go any further , let me ask you a question . It may seem kind of silly , but humor me . Do you have a girlfriend ? " A sudden intuition came to me , and I lied without even thinking about it . " NO ! I mean , no ma ' am . I mean , I have some friends who are girls , but why would you want to make out with your friend ? ! ? I mean . . . " and trailed off . Mom nodded , and turned back to me . " The other option is for Nina to sleep in your room . Now wait , before you answer ; I know you would be giving up your privacy , and it might just be too weird to have a girl in your room . Either one of those is a perfectly ok reason to say no . It really is , understand ? " " Well , no . . . " I tried to look confused , " What 's the big deal ? Really , it would be cool to have Nina in there ; it would be just like having a big sister , right ? I mean , I don 't have to sleep in the same bed with her . . . uh . . . do I ? " And I tried to look suddenly concerned as I said it . Hours later , after a short ride home , dinner , and a boring game of Parcheesi , ( which Nina and dad seemed to really enjoy ; go figure ) , Nina and I were in our beds . She was in my bed temporarily , because it was less painful to get in and out of . My parents had both come in to say goodnight , and distribute hugs , which they had not done for years , and we listened to their steps retreating to their room . " Suck cocks ? Well I like it better during an adventure , " she giggled , " but , yes , I like it , so what ? Now do you want a blow job or not ? " After a little experimenting , I ended up slouched across the bed with her head on my stomach . This way , she could easily get to my pecker without having to move too much . The first time , I came in about 30 seconds ; I hadn 't beat off for two days . Then we just lay there ; I stroked her hair , she played with my dick and balls . We talked off and on , and I came two more times before we fell asleep . Fortunately , having her head on my stomach , also meant on my bladder . Fortunately , because otherwise my parents would have found us like that in the morning . I had to go to school , but it had been decided that Nina would stay home until she healed up some . But when I was home , even if we only had two minutes , Nina made sure she had some part of her body in contact with my pecker , and made sure I came at least a few times a day . I beat off a couple of times , but just to amuse her , not because she wasn 't keeping my balls drained . One night , I asked if her offer to fuck me was still on . She was obviously getting better , and she seemed to be in a good mood . Her answer surprised me , though . " I 've been meaning to talk to you about that . First of all , I shouldn 't swear so much around you ; you 're too young to be using words like that , and I 'm sorry . So I want you to say , ' making love , ' Ok ? It 's a whole different feeling when you think about making love , not fucking . Oh , I said it again ! Sorry . I know you probably don 't really get what I 'm saying , but please just trust me , ok ? " " Second , I know I said I would , but this is one promise I 'm going to go back on . But I 'm not sorry about that , and here 's why : Your first time should be with somebody you really care about , and ideally it will also be the first time for that somebody too . Not some old whore like me . " " Ok , maybe that 's a little harsh . I 've only been with two guys , and my first time was really sweet . I want you to have that too , ok ? So no nookie for you ; you 'll just have to make do with getting sucked off - I mean , oral sex - a few times a day . " Yeah , I 'd say that 's pretty close . Besides , you may have that first time sooner than you think , you know ? So are we cool ? " The only thing was , she wouldn 't let me kiss her , feel her up , or anything else . She kept saying that she was still too sore , although she didn 't act like it . Then Saturday came . I woke up with Nina on my bed , sucking my cock . " Shh . I told them last night that I didn 't think I was ready for 6 hours in the car . Then I told them that I didn 't want to be alone all day , and that you had agreed to stay with me . " She resumed her blowjob . " But , but , why . . . " She just giggled at my confusion . I was still sleepy headed , and suddenly I was scared that the old Nina was back - although her mouth sure felt good on my pecker . She giggled again around my dick . " Well , yes , but I guarantee that you 'll like this one , little Jimmy Harper ! Now shut up and cum ! Sorry ; I mean , would you please shut up and cum ? We have to get ready . " I just sighed in reply . A few minutes later , I was limp , and following Nina to the bathroom . She ran a bath , and had me get in . " You just relax , Jimmy , and I 'll be back in a few minutes , ok ? " " Um , ok . . . " She had a mischievous grin on her face as she left , and even though she had been great to me all week , I was still feeling a little nervous . A few minutes later , she returned with a bowl of cereal and some orange juice . " Want me to feed it to you ? " she asked , giggling . " Hi , uh , this is taking a little longer than I thought , " she said , dipping a hand in the tub . " Could be a little warmer . " She added some hot water to the tub , and left again . " Back soon ! " She seemed happy and excited about something , but I couldn 't imagine what ; making me breakfast ? She 'd already done that . The only other things I could think of were bad . Finally , Nina reappeared , but just stuck her head in the door . " Jimmy ? I have a surprise for you , so close your eyes ! " " OK . " Now I was totally bewildered . What the heck was she up to ? ! ? Maybe she got me an Xbox ? But she wouldn 't give it to me while I was in the tub , would she ? ! ? Nina giggled at that . Then I heard her stepping into the tub and sitting down at the other end , her legs bumping into mine as she go situated . Then . . . nothing . I could hear a little moving around at the other end of the tub , but that was it . " Um , can I open my eyes now ? " No answer . " Nina ? " All I got for answer was a giggle . But ? It didn 't sound right . But if it wasn 't Nina , then . . . starting to panic , my eyes flew open . " STACY ? ! ? " I started to stand up , realized I was naked , splashed back down , realized she could still see me through the water , started to turn around , and then it hit me ; Stacy was naked , too ! And at this point , she was also laughing . " Sorry Jimmy , " she giggled , " Nina thought it would be a fun way to get us together ! " " But , but , but . . . " I spluttered . This just made her laugh more , but aside from the shock , I couldn 't think of a thing I would have liked better . I 'd trade a naked Stacy for a nasty old Xbox anytime ! I still couldn 't talk though . " Stacy ! Wow ! I mean , this is so . . . so . . . gosh you 're beautiful ! " I meant all of her , but even at 13 , she was more developed than Nina , and that 's what I was looking at when I said it . I realized it as I said it , and then turned a lovely shade of pink . " No ! I mean . . . I . . . Oh crap . . . " and with that clever pronouncement , I buried my face in my hands , now totally mortified . I heard her moving , and when I looked up , her face was inches from mine . " You are the sweetest person , ever , Jimmy Harper . " And then she kissed me , and it was wonderful . As we kissed , we relaxed against the back of the tub . I became aware of her bare tits pressed against my chest , and felt like a mild electric charge was working its way down my body . I 'd felt her boobs before , but that was inside of a bra and a tee shirt . Having nothing between us like this was fantastic . My cock , of course , was already sticking straight up . I was sort of annoyed by that - even though we were both naked and kissing in a warm tub of water , I didn 't want her to think that sex was all I could think about . But Stacy didn 't give any indication that she was bothered at all . In fact , she moved a leg so that she was straddling one of my thighs , and began to slowly hump her pussy on it as we continued necking . It was divine ; I didn 't ever want it to end . Then I felt her fingers tracing around the head of my pecker . " What ? Nina said . . . She , oh my god , what , what ? ! ? " " It 's ok ! " Tracy said with a giggle . " Calm down . Didn 't you wonder how I ended up in this bathtub with you , silly boy ? " Nope , never entered my mind , but now that she mentioned it . . . " Sooo , I 'm an idiot , I admit it . Maybe you could just explain everything to me ? " Tracy giggled again , kissed me deeply , and leaned back . She had stopped humping my leg , but she was still teasing the hell out of my cock . " Ok . Two days ago , I woke up with a fever , so I couldn 't go to school , even though I wasn 't really sick - you know the rules . " " Jimmy , it 's OK ! Really ! " she kissed me again , and continued . " Listen , I don 't want to waste our time together today , so I 'm going to tell you exactly what we talked about , OK ? " " Let 's see . , She said that she made you have sex with her , but she shouldn 't have done that . She said you didn 't have intercourse , but she was going to , but then after she got beat up , she realized how mean she had been to you , and that she wanted your first time to be special . I thought that was really cool . Then she said she 'd been having oral sex with you all week to make up for being so bad to you . At first I didn 't like that , but then she said she didn 't know that I liked you so much , and since you get erections all the time , it seemed like a good way to make things up to you . And she told me she wouldn 't do it any more if I didn 't want her to . But I thought about it , and since I can 't take care of you because we hardly ever get to see each other , I thought it wouldn 't be fair to you if I told her to stop , see ? " " Yeah . . . no . . you shouldn 't . . . I mean , I shouldn 't . . . " I 'd just been enjoying my blow jobs all week , and although I 'd certainly thought about Stacy , I had not thought about how she might feel . I was totally flustered , and feeling acutely embarrassed . " Sorry . " " Don 't be , really . Nina said that we were just kids , even if we both seem to be pretty horny for our age . She said we would both make mistakes , but we have to learn from them , not just feel bad , or be mad . " " But . . . " I knew what I wanted to say , but I didn 't know how to start . Then suddenly , I knew how to say it . " Stacy , I care about you a lot . I mean , a lot more than a friend . Nina is , gosh , I don 't know , but I could never care about her like I do about you . " " Jimmy , Jimmy , " she said , snuggling up against me . " Don 't you see ? That 's what makes you so special , that you would care so much . But it 's really ok , understand ? In fact we decided she should do you this morning , so you wouldn 't come right away when I got in the tub . " " You . . . she ? " Tracy was smiling again . " Well , um , ' thank you ? ' But I won 't let her do it any more . " " Yes you will , because I want you to let her suck you . " " NO ! I . . . no , I don 't want her in here with us . OK , I believe you . I just have to get used to the idea . I always think about you when she 's . . . doing it . " A little while later , I came in her hand , and within moments , Stacy started making little squealing noises through clenched teeth , went rigid and shook for a few seconds . It was so different from Nina 's orgasms , that I didn 't realize what was happening for a moment . Then Stacy started kissing my neck lightly , and crying . Now what ? ! ? " Yeah , " she sniffled , " I just wanted to cum with you for so long , and it was so wonderful , and you 're so sweet , and . . . I 'm sorry , I 'm just so happy . " And suddenly , I was really happy , too . In fact all I could think about was that I was in love , even though I was scared to say it . I just told her that I was really happy , too . We just lay their while Stacy quieted down . I stroked her hair and back , while she gently rubbed cum around my pecker . We probably would have stayed longer but the water was getting cold . " We should probably get out , hunh ? " For answer , she slid down , and licked a little cum off the end of my cock . I could only see the back of her head , but she seemed to be considering how it tasted . I guess it was ok , because then she proceeded to lick up all the jizz from my cock , stomach , and her hand . Of course , my pecker was standing up again before she was done , and I was feeling flustered , but Stacy was delighted . Stacy laughed . " No ! I just forgot something we might want later . " I raised an eyebrow at her , but we were in the kitchen by then , where she grabbed a plastic grocery bag off a chair . I then realized that the clothes hanging on the chair must be hers , and even though I had a hand on her naked bottom , that made me even more horny . I turned to her , and kissed her , pressing her close to me . My boner slid between her thighs , the top of it rubbing against her pussy . We both gave an involuntary shudder . Stacy pulled back a bit , " Bed ? " I thought about it . If it had been Nina , it would have been too weird . But for some reason , it was ok with Stacy . And it was certainly a lot bigger than my bed . " No , it 's ok . Now can we get back to kissing ? " Stacy laughed at that , then fell on top of me , burying her tongue in my mouth . We kissed , groped and licked . Stacy came again while I licked her pussy , and I came in her mouth . We took a breather , although I still had a finger in her twat , while she idly twiddled my hardening dick . We talked a bit about how wonderful it was , and then Stacy rolled onto her back , spreading her knees . I started to climb on top , then stopped . She looked at me questioningly , then smiled as she whispered in my ear , " Get the bag . " " Of course ! " I opened the box , and pulled out a pre - filled inserter that looked like a hypodermic without the needle . I hadn 't seen one before , but it was pretty obvious what to do with it . I teased her clit with my tongue as I pressed the inserter into her pussy . She was incredibly wet , and groaned loudly , arching her clit into my mouth . I threw the empty inserter over my shoulder , and looked up to see Stacy smiling at me . She was holding an unwrapped condom , which she lovingly unrolled over my cock . " Now " she whispered . In reply , I kissed her deeply , as I climbed between her thighs . I wasn 't sure what to do , so I pressed the head of my penis against her cunt lips , and just held it there . Our mouths still pressed together , Stacy groaned again , and lifted her ass up off the bed , pushing her pussy up , and my cock inside . It felt so good , I almost couldn 't stand it . Then she started fucking herself on my meat , heaving her ass up higher and higher , forcing me deeper into her hole . She gave out a little cry with each push , and at last I pushed back , forcing my cock completely into her . She made a drawn out sound between a wail and a squeal . Her body stiffened , and keeping her ass in the air , first one leg whipped up off the bed wrapping around by own ass , then the other , her ankles locking . Stacy ground her cunt against me , and I moved in unison with her . I would have cum then , if she hadn 't drained my balls just 10 minutes earlier . Her sounds became louder and louder , and she started thrashing her head from one side to the other , as an intense orgasm overwhelmed her . Her arms shot straight out to her sides , and she grabbed handfuls of sheets , all the while trying to crush my straining cock deeper inside of her . As her orgasm subsided , she slowly relaxed down onto the bed . I began sliding my dick in and out of her . She gave a little gasping moan with each thrust , and after a minute , Stacy grabbed my ass with her hands , encouraging me to come down harder and faster each time . Within moments , I was banging away furiously , so hard that I was now bouncing her across the bed . Then suddenly I was struck by my own orgasm . I spontaneously grabbed her shoulders , crusher her up against my cock while my juice shot out in almost painfully pleasurable spurts . At the same time , pinned by my throbbing pecker , Stacy came again , stiffening , using her feet and hand to squash us closer , as she ground her cunt against me once more . At last we collapsed ; spent , sweating , and breathing like racehorses . I started to move , thin " Keep it in , keep it in , ok , Jimmy ? " She panted . " I 'd love to , " and I meant it . We kept my cock in her pussy for the next three hours . We took breaks to kiss and cuddle , and catch our breaths , but mostly we made love , and lost count of how many times we came . We broke twice to change condoms , and add more spermicide , and my dick slipped out once while we were banging doggy style , but otherwise we managed to keep it in inside her the whole time , never completely getting soft . Early in the afternoon , her love juice was starting to run out , I was not getting completely hard any more , and we both realized we were starving . In the kitchen , we filled up a tray with junk food , ice cream and some fruit , and took it back to the bed . We were surprised to see what a mess we had made . The top sheet and covers were on the floor , there were wet spots all over , and three discarded rubbers with my jizz leaking from them . " Well , we going to have to clean up anyway , so a few crumbs won 't hurt , " observed Stacy as she climbed on the bed . " Yipes ! It 's cold ! " she squeaked as she landed in a wet spot . " I think we can probably warm it up , don 't you ? " and we did . We ate , smeared food on each other and licked it off , wrestled when I tried to put some ice cream in her pussy , cuddled , kissed , and made love till around 4 in the afternoon . We 'd used up the condoms and the spermicide , and were just kissing and fondling each other at that point , when Nina interrupted us . " Yeah , " Stacy answered dreamily , " C ' mon in . " I was so happy , and feeling so satisfied , and in love , that it didn 't even occur to me to worry about the fact that we were naked , arms and legs twined together . " Sorry to break up the party , " said Nina , stepping into the room , " but . . . Oh my god . . . " Her eyes widened as she looked around the room . " Oh my god . I could tell you guys were having fun in here from the noise , but . . . Wow ! " Alarmed by her tone , we sat up , and looked around , really seeing the room for the first time in hours . The floor and bed were littered with condoms , condom wrappers , inserters , food , things we 'd accidently knocked off the night tables . . . Wow indeed . " Jezis , you guys , this is amazing ! I should have come in here sooner ! Listen ; the ' rents will be here in about an hour , so we have to get moving . " " It 's not that bad ; we can do this , " she said taking control . " First , Stacy , let go of Jimmy 's dick , " Her hand leapt away . " Next , both of you , into the shower , and make it quick - no fucking around . I mean , oh hell , just get going ! " We nodded , raced off to the shower , and that 's how it went . We got cleaned up , the sheets were washed , the trash taken out , the mattress flipped , the bed re - made , and the bedroom floor mopped . An hour later , Stacy and I plopped down exhausted on the sofa , and a moment later , Nina joined us . Mystified , we both started looking around . And then down , and then at each other . . . Stacy and I were still in our birthday suits . We both turned pink , and Nina laughed as we went off to get out clothes . We got Stacy 's from the kitchen , and went back to my bedroom to dress . I pulled a pair of boxers out of my dresser , but when I turned around , Stacy was just staring at me , her clothes still just hanging over her arm . Suddenly it hit me that our magic day was ending , and I didn 't want it to . Ever . Reading my mind , Stacy said , " I can 't believe it 's over ! " as we ran into each other 's arms . She sobbed very quietly as we kissed and hugged . " Me too . " That was all she said . But we were both wondering how we could get together again like this - it could be weeks , or even months . We finally broke apart , dressed , and moped back out to the living room , hand - in - hand . " Hey ! Be quiet and let me talk ! " She looked sternly at us , but we could tell she was trying not to smile . " Jimmy ; your folks think I 'm taking you to the park tomorrow afternoon , and Stacy , you are supposedly going shopping with me . I think we were both staring with our mouths open . Nina just smiled and continued . " In fact , you 're both going to a cabin on a private lake near here . Will that do ? " We both started talking at once again . It turned out that that Nina had been keeping the cabin clean for a local family , and they had invited her to use it when they were not there . I don 't think we could have been more excited . Nina only made us promise not make such big a mess next time . After that , Nina made sure that we got to see each other at least once or twice a week , even if it was only after school at the mall . It was wonderful and awful - we could hardly bare to be apart , and we talked on the phone constantly . Meanwhile , Nina also made sure that my balls were well drained . And every time , Stacy wanted to know where we were when Nina sucked me off , and what we were wearing , and how long it took , and how much cum there was . I thought I would hate talking about it , but Stacy would always masturbate while I did , and a lot of times she would have at least a little orgasm . I seldom had enough privacy to jerk off while we talked , but I did it whenever I could . That was my life through the rest of the spring and that summer . In fall , Nina went off to a two year college , but Stacy and I started going to the same school . That made it easier to find time alone together , and it was wonderful . I lost touch with Nina , but I just saw her again recently . Well , a picture , anyway . A friend sent me a photo of a couple making love while sky diving . There were no names , but the girl was definitely Nina . And from the looks of it , a very happy Nina . I was glad she was still having adventures , but I was just as glad that I wasn 't a part of them anymore . |
I was , to put it mildly , sexually precocious . By the time I was 13 years old , I was jerking off three or more times a day , and trying ( desperately ) to peak into the clothes of every female I got near . I sort of had a girl friend , Stacy , who was a year older than me . Our parents had been trading baby sitting since we were little , so we had been thrown together every week or so for years . We were good friends , but we sledom had play dates separate from the sitting . Anyway , a year ago , Stacy started sprouting titties about the same time I discovered the toy in my pants . A few months ago , on one of the few occasions we were left alone together , we somehow ended up necking . I was a bit shy , so even though there was a lot of rubbing of bodies , and much saliva exchanged , not much else happened . Since then , we 've had a number of short sessions , which were usually less than relaxed because of a nearby parent . In the one longer session we had , I got as far as getting my hand inside her bra . She seemed to be enjoying it a lot , but then I came in my pants . I got all flustered and embarrassed , and then my dad reappeared , so we had to stop anyway . Stacy and I talked a lot about wishing we could spend a whole day kissing and ' stuff ' without worrying about being interrupted . Even though I 'd get a boner if I saw the tiniest bit of cleavage , I always thought of Stacy when I beat off . I had been feeling for a long time that I didn 't need a sitter . But if I told my parents that , then I would never see Stacy , since we went to different schools . So when they told me they had hired Nina for the evening when Stacy 's family was out of town , I didn 't complain . At least it was a girl , and maybe I 'd be able to get a look down her shirt or something . As you 'll see it turned out better - and worse - than that . To start with , Nina arrived clad only in a two piece bathing suit . She had just come from her after school job as a life guard , and said that her bag had been accidently locked in the office . My mom gave her a bathrobe , but I already had a hard - on . I mean , I 'd seen lots of girls in bikinis , but somehow it was different when one was in my house . Even though she was pretty much flat chested , she was in such good shape , that I was mesmerized just watching her walk around . And what she lacked up front , she made up for in the rear ; I 'd become enamored of round girl bottoms , probably because Stacy had one , and Nina 's was just as good or better . Shortly after my parents left , we ended up on the sofa in front of the TV . I kept sneaking peeks at her , day dreaming about feeling her up , or kissing . She had a small mouth with thin lips , dark brown eyes , and short black hair loosely curling around her head . I liked it , but she somehow looked intimidating . The fact that she had only said about two sentences to me didn 't help . After a while , she slouched down , and the robe fell open . I immediately noticed that her swim suit bottom had stretched up around her crotch , and I could see the outline of her pussy . The fabric was so tight , that I could see where her pubic hairs made little humps in it . I put my arm across my lap , so I wouldn 't make a tent in my pants . After a few minutes , I had to get some relief . I got up , mumbling something about going to the bathroom , and was already rubbing my dick through my shorts as I walked down hall . Although I ALWAYS locked the door when I beat off , apparently I was so excited about Nina 's camel toe that I forgot . Yeah , you know how this ended ; She must of watched me leave , and could tell what I was doing , even from the back . It didn 't occur to me until long afterwards to wonder why she followed me , and then just barged in without knocking . And of course , I was cumming just when she appeared . I screeched , and jumped two feet in the air , jizz flying everywhere . Including - of course again - a big ole glob on Nina 's chest , right between her pancake tits . I yanked up my boxers , went for my shorts , but tripped and fell on my face instead . I totally freaked out ; " Please , oh god , I 'm so sorry , oh please , don 't tell , please , please , I 'll do anything , I 'm so sorry ! ! " Well , you get the idea ; pretty pathetic . I had my face buried in the bathroom rug the whole time , and it finally occurred to me that Nina hadn 't said a word . " Oh NO ! " I thought , " Did she run out ? ! ? I 'm sooo screwed . . . " But when I looked up finally , she was just leaning against the door frame , with her a bored look on her face . " Good . Now listen to me closely , little Jimmy Harper ; If you do not want this ' incident ' reported to your parents , then you will do exactly as I say . And I mean EXACTLY , or I will make you very , very sorry . Do you understand me ? " " OK . First , you 're going to answer some questions . And don 't lie to me ! I 'll know if you do , and you will be punished , understand ? " ' Yes ! " I yelped , then , " No ! I mean , I touched Stacy 's boobs , and came in my pants ! " If a person could die of embarrassment , I 've have been gone right then . Instead all I could do was cringe waiting for her next question . But all I heard was a snort . I glanced up , and saw why ; she was trying not to laugh at me . I didn 't know if that was good or bad , so I just buried my face in the rug again . After a minute , I heard her shift around , and take a breath after biting back her laughter . " Ok , so you 're a horny little fuck . Hm . Maybe we can have little " adventure . ' " I leapt up , and licked it off . Ew , ew , ew . I started to turn to the sink to spit it out , but Nina grabbed my chin , hard . " Good boy , " She said , letting go . " Now , let 's go to your room . " And she stalked off down the hall . I trailed behind her , scared half to death . She stopped just inside the door , looking around . " Guess this is ok . " She turned to face me and continued , " Now listen up , jerk wad , I 've had this stupid swim suit on all day , and it 's starting to chafe , so I 'm going to take it off . That does not mean I want to get all lovey dovey , especially not with a little peckerhead like you , understand ? " I nodded , and she started wiggling out of the bottoms . I had no idea what I should do , so I stared at the floor . As I watched her feet stepping out of the bottoms , she said meanly , " And if you do have a problem , I don 't want to know about it - just remember to lock the door next time . " I blushed as a moment later , her bikini top landed beside the bottoms . Despite my fear of Nina , my dick started to harden again . " Hm . Well that will have to do , " she said climbing onto my bed . " Get your ass over here , and give me a back rub . And no funny stuff ! " This was getting crazy . I had a naked girl on my bed , a full hard - on at this point , and all I could do was rub her back ? It wasn 't fair , it just wasn 't fair . " What ? Oh , sorry , yeah , back rub . " And I leaned over the bed , and started working on her neck . It was an awkward angle to work from , but I was too freaked out and aroused to figure it out , so I just did the best I could as I worked down her back . On top . Right . Now my stupid dick was starting to ache . She was obviously torturing me , but I didn 't know how to get out of it , and at the same time , wasn 't sure I wanted to . The bed was too narrow to kneel beside her , so I gingerly straddled ass . I was afraid to sit , so I stayed perched above her as I continued massaging . It was so much different from doing my mom 's or dad 's back . I could feel each muscle as I worked my way down , and that made my poor pecker just throb . When I got to her tail bone , I started back up . " Uh , ok . " Not really . At the thought of rubbing her bare ass , my cock became painfully hard . I couldn 't stand it . Worse , I started to scooch down , but she had spread her legs , so I ended up kneeling between them with a perfect view of her little pink asshole and her cunt . Her cunt with a sparse covering of jet black hairs , and a wet sheen along the lips . It really , really wasn 't fair ! I started massaging her butt . Suddenly , Nina began making little furry sounds , and pushed her ass up into my hands . I desperately needed to jerk off , but I didn 't dare even ask . I massaged closer and closer into the area between her legs , and her noises became louder , and the pushing became more insistent . I was starting to panic because I didn 't know what to do ; she had warned me against " funny stuff , " but she seemed to be inviting it at the same time ! Then suddenly she slumped flat to the bed . " Shit , shit , shit . This isn 't working . " I tensed , waiting for her to yell or hit me . Instead , she hopped up off the bed , and started for the door . " What are you waiting for , fuck head ? " she called over her shoulder . " C ' mon ! " " Yeah , no shit , Sherlock . So what ? It 's dark ; nobody can see us even if they did look outside . Now quit fucking around and get out here ! " " SHIT ! " she hissed , as her ass came into contact with the metal . " Colder than I thought . " " This is a bad idea , I . . . " " Just shut up you stupid fuck , " she whispered angrily . " Crap ; maybe I made a mistake . Maybe I should just tell you ' rents about the bathroom , and let you fry . " " Dammit , I said ' LICK , ' not ' TICKLE , ' dumbass . " And grabbing my hair , she crammed my head against her gushing wet pussy . She immediately began grinding against me , fucking herself with my face . " LICK ME ! " she hissed , yanking my hair . I licked . I licked all over ; I had no idea what I was doing , and I was having trouble getting my nose clear of her hole long enough to get a breath . Nina started grunting and squirmed harder against me . Suddenly , her legs whipped up off the ground , and locked together behind my neck , squashing my poor face even harder against her steaming hole . She let go of my hair , and grabbed the sides of the slide . Her thrashing became so wild that I was afraid she would break my neck - if I didn 't suffocate first . More or less accidently , I jabbed my tongue into her hole . She arched up off the slide , and as we toppled sideways onto the grass , I heard muffled squealing . Glancing up , I saw her biting down on her hand , and suddenly realized that she must be having an orgasm . Despite the beating she was giving me , I still had a boner which was now harder than ever . We crashed to the ground , and she continued to buck against my face for another minute as her orgasm subsided . When she finally let go of my poor aching head , we were both gasping and drenched in sweat , despite the cool night air . " Woo ! Yeah . . . In fact , I think you deserve a reward . " And with that , rolled me onto my back , and unceremoniously yanked my shorts and boxers down to my knees . My boner immediately popped straight up . " What are you . . . " but before I could finish my question , she was enthusiastically sucking my cock . I didn 't last thirty seconds . She giggled around by pecker as I shot my load into her mouth , and kept sucking until every drop was gone . It felt so fantastically good , I couldn 't believe it . I instantly forgot all the mean things Nina has said and done , and was about to declare my undying love for her , when she abruptly sat up . My mostly limp pecker popped out of her mouth . " God , are you getting hard again ? C ' mon boner boy , we better get cleaned up before your ' rents get home . " I just turned and ran to my bedroom . I suddenly remembered how scared I was of her , and I wasn 't sure I wanted another adventure . However , that didn 't stop me from beating off after I got in bed . I came ten minutes later , and looked up to see Nina watching me from the doorway . I was horribly embarrassed ; I 'd spent the last year avoiding getting caught masturbating , and she 'd caught me twice in one evening . I cringed , waiting for whatever mean thing she was going to do to me now , as my face burned with shame . " Sweet dreams , " she gurgled ; apparently , she had not swallowed my jizz yet . Just then we both heard the gravel crunching in the driveway . Nina smiled , picked up her swim suit from the floor , and wiggled into it as she went to greet my parents with a mouthful of my cum . I didn 't see Nina again for a few weeks after that first night she sat for me . I jerked off more than ever - no surprise there , I guess . Stacy came over one evening , but as usual we couldn 't get any privacy . We necked a little in the living room , but both my parents were 10 feet away in the kitchen . So we couldn 't do anything , and popped apart every time we heard any noise that might be them coming in . That just made it worse . Nina had given me my first blow job , but she was also scary as hell . I wanted Stacy . Nina had been incredibly ugly to me , but she made out to my folks like we were best buds . She told mom and dad that I was a really special kid , and that she loved being my sitter , and she hoped they would call her again , and could she take me out for the afternoon some weekend , etc . , etc . For my part , it was hard ( in more ways that one ! ) not to pester my parents about when Nina could sit . Even though I was just 13 , I was smart enough to figure out that they would get suspicious if I did . So when they asked me how I liked her , I said , " Ok , I guess . " And when mom asked what we did , I actually started to get a woody just thinking about it , but I managed to keep a straight face when I said , " Oh , watched TV , talked , um , played some games . " Some games ! I had more sex in 2 hours that night than I 'd had since I started beating off a year ago , even if I was scared half the time as well . Finally , another chance came ; they hired Nina to watch me during a teacher work day . When they told me on Friday , I ran to the bathroom , and jerked off . Afterwards , I had the idea that I wouldn 't do it any more until Monday ; that I 'd sort of ' save it ' for Nina . That turned out to be hard . Very , very hard . . . I almost broke down several times , but I managed to keep my hands out of my pants . Monday morning finally arrived , and I woke up an hour early . I always had a boner when I woke up , but usually it went down while I was peeing if I didn 't beat off first . Today it didn 't ; I had a boner all morning , which was very weird when my mom hugged me good bye . But if she noticed that I was kind of leaning the lower half of my body away from her , she didn 't let on . Sheesh ! What ? I mean , I guess I didn 't expect her to fall on her knees and blow me , but I didn 't expect her to show up pissed off , either . " I . . . uh , sorry , I , I was just , it 's nice to see you again " I ran to the bathroom , and stood there while the tub filled , feeling peeved and sorry for myself . My pecker was limp for the first time all morning . I called to Nina when the tub was ready , and she came striding in , still clearly fuming . She started to pull the shapeless dress she was wearing off over her head , and then stopped . " What the hell are you staring at ! " I practically leapt out of the door . It slammed behind me , and I heard the door lock . I was near tears . I was one of those ' good ' kids who never get in trouble . I mean , nobody ever yelled at me , and she was treating me like I 'd killed her dog or something . After that , I heard an occasional swear word come from the bathroom , but that was all . It finally dawned on me that she wasn 't mad at me ; I was just a convenient target . I still felt pretty bad , though , and I was afraid of what she would do when she came out . I 'm short for my age to begin with ; most people assume I 'm like nine , even though I 'm thirteen . And Nina is not only a foot taller , but it 's also obvious that she works out . I just meandered around the house worrying all this for a while , then finally slumped in front of the TV . It was at least an hour later when Nina suddenly sat down beside me ; I 'd been spacing out , and hadn 't heard her come in the room . I cringed , expecting her to yell at me again , but she didn 't . " Alright . Alright . . . Look , let 's go to the mall . I want to do some shopping , and I 'll buy you an ice cream or something . How does that sound ? " " Yeah , really . " She turned and looked at me . " But don 't get used to it , little Jimmy Harper ! " She suddenly had an evil glint in her eye . " Remember , I 'm still in charge here , right ? " Adventure ? After the last " adventure , " I didn 't know if I wanted another one . But if there was another blow job involved . . . Besides , how much of an ' adventure ' could we have at the mall ? We went right to the ice cream place in the food court , even though it was only 10 in the morning . It shows you how boring my life was that I thought that was pretty cool . Then she insisted on feeding it to me with a spoon , which was really embarrassing , even though there was nobody around at the time . Nina told me to pretend I was enjoying it , or she 'd smear it on my face , and lick it off . I did my best , and fortunately she got bored with it after a few minutes and let me finish it myself . Then I followed her around while she looked at clothes . She chatted at me off and on , but I was starting to wonder if this is what it would feel like to be a younger brother with a bossy sister . Then I suddenly was her younger brother . Her annoying younger brother . . . We were in a department store , and I hadn 't realized we were heading for the women 's dressing rooms until we were almost there . Although she had a few blouses over her arm , we 'd spent the last 10 minutes in the underwear department , and I had a full boner going . Hey , I was just 13 , what do you expect ? Anyway , just as we were passing a cashier near the entrance of the dressing rooms , Nina suddenly whipped around and grabbed my arm . " YES , you 're going in with me ; I am NOT spending another half hour looking for you again , you little jerk ! " The cashier glanced up , and I was totally mortified ; What was she taking about , and why was she yelling at me ? ! ? " And don 't you peek , or I 'll smack you , I don 't care what mom says ! " I was starting to panic , but when I looked at her again , she was smiling , trying not to laugh . Duh ! It was all an act for the cashier so she could get me into the dressing room , but why ? She dragged me into the stall on the far end , and locked the door . " wha . . . ? ? ? ? " " Oh for chrissake , jimmy , for a smart kid , you can be really dense , now c ' mon , we only got a few minutes . " She was pulling my shorts down around my ankles . " Step out of ' em ! " Finally , the light came on ; Oh no . . . this must be the ' adventure . ' " But what if somebody comes in ? ! ? " " That 's what make it fun , stupid ! Now get your shirt off - I want to see my ' little brother ' naked ! " and while I did that , she pulled her dress off . Somehow , I wasn 't surprised that she had nothing on under it . She climbed up on the little bench built onto the dressing room wall , and began massaging her pussy with both hands . " Get over here and lick me . Hurry up ! We don 't have much time . " I did as I was told . I had been thinking about licking pussy a lot since last time , and so I was a little more prepared . I tried licking her pussy different ways ; up and down , side to side , fast , slow , etc . She definitely wanted fast , and responded when I dipped my tongue between her cunt lips , or licked her clit . Standing up , she could only wrap one leg around my back , so she couldn 't really crush me like last time . As she started to cum - she was biting on her hand trying not to squeal - I slid a finger into her cunt as far it would go , and focused my licking on her clit . That sent her over the top , and I think she pulled out some of my hair as she finished fucking herself on my face . " Oh shit , oh god ! " she whispered hoarsely , " that was so good ! Shit , where 'd did you get that trick from , you clever little fuck ? " ( My finger was still in her , and she was gently squirming on it . ) " Well , you keep thinking , but now it 's reward time ! Hop up here and change places with me ! " I did , and realized she had been watching me eat her out in the mirror . Now I could watch her suck me off ! Even though I was still extremely nervous about getting caught , that seemed pretty exciting . Sitting on the bench , Nina turned me sideways , so she could also watch . Remember that I had not beat off for three days , so once again , I came in about 30 seconds . Nina felt me getting ready to blow , and backed off my cock with her mouth open . I think she wanted to watch it squirt into her mouth , but her aim was off . Three days of cum gushered out , and went everywhere ; face , hair , tits , walls , floor , everywhere , probably , but in her mouth . I cringed , because she looked for a second like she was going to blow up at me . But then , looking around , she started to giggle , then laugh , then laugh really loud ! She fell over on the bench laughing , noticed her hand had landed in a glob of you - know - what , and laughed even harder . She grabbed my dick and squeezed it , which for some reason set her off again . I kept begging her to be quiet , and she finally calmed down to giggling and snorting , and sat up . Looking around , she grabbed one of the blouses she had come in with , and wiped her cunt juice off my face and chest . Then she used it to clean herself up , and the stall a little bit . By the time she was done , the shirt was wet and sticky . She balled it up , and stuffed it under the bench , then we got dressed , and left . I wanted to run , but Nina told me that we had to walk casually , if we didn 't want to attract attention . Getting out of that store was the longest five minutes of my life . She took me to a sub place for lunch . She sat next to me in a corner booth , and put a hand in my shorts while I ate , and played with my dick until I came in her hand . Then she spread it like mayo on her sandwich , which seemed incredibly gross . But it got worse ; she wanted me to take bites , and then push them into her mouth . I started to protest , but she said if I didn 't , she would take my shorts , and leave me there . So I did it , feeling slightly sick the whole time . Nina seemed to like sperm , but it was just too weird for me . I was also painfully aware of people peeking at what must have looked like a little boy frenching a teenager . We got back to my house about mid afternoon . Nina immediately stripped off her dress , and I immediately got another boner . " Jezis , you really are a horny little fuck , " she said , glancing at the tent in my shorts . " Well , you 'll have to jerk off or something , because I mainly want to get a shower and wash all your boy - gunk off me . " She started towards the bathroom , then called over her shoulder , " Come on , you too ; can 't have you smelling like cunt when your ' rents get home . " I got a big doofy smile on my face , and trotted after her , shedding clothes as I went . She decided to have a bath instead . She peed while we waited for the tub to fill . She saw me staring . " Guess you never saw a girl pee , huhn ? Well take a look - it 's just pee . " And she spread her legs and leaned back . Maybe it was just pee , but it made my dick harder . " Taste it , if you want " " Maybe some other time , " she said with a wicked grin . " I 'm done , now wipe me . With toilet paper ! Front to back . That 's it . Once more . Now unless you want to keep it , throw it in the toilet . " " uh , thanks ? " She laughed , climbed in the tub , and sat down . I wasn 't sure what I was supposed to do , so I just stood there with my boner sticking out . " What are you waiting for , dummy , an invitation ? C ' mon , get in . Sit ; No , the other way , I 'm going to wash your back . " And she did . It felt really nice . I didn 't even realize I 'd started idly sliding my hand up and down my boner under the water . But Nina noticed . " You 're back 's done . Now turn around so I can watch you jack off . " I stood up , and started yanking my dick . After a few minutes , I sort of got used to her staring at me , but it would have helped if she had been masturbating too . When I came , a glob went up in the air , and she tried to catch it . She missed , and just splashed us instead , and we both ended up giggling . Then she made me wash her all over , including her hair ( which had my dried up cum in it ) . I spent a little too much time on her little titties , and she told me to quit fucking around . I said sorry , but I was thinking that even though I 'd had my tongue in her pussy and my dick in her mouth , this was the first time I 'd touched her breasts . And the nipples had become hard immediately , which seemed to be contagious , since my pecker started coming back to life at the same time . " Sorry . It 's , well . . . you kind of help . . . " " Aw , what a sweet thing to say . Maybe I 'll give you a little present before I leave this afternoon . " We were sitting in the tub facing each other , and as she spoke , she started gently rubbing my cock with her feet . Then she chatted about other things , all the while stroking my sausage with her piggies . I was getting incredibly horny , but I didn 't dare ask her to do anything . Finally , in desperation , I asked her if she wanted to watch me jerk off again . " Thanks for offering , Jimmy , but not right now . Actually , your dad is supposed to be home soon , so we better get out . Now it 's time for you to dry me . " I did , and now my boner was starting to seriously ache . She left me to dry myself , and when I came out , she was standing by the front door . I was relieved to see that she had put her dress on , since the door was open . " Come here , Jimmy . There 's a nice breeze coming through the screen . " A little bell went off in my head ; I knew somehow that was an odd thing for her to say , but I went anyway . When I got to her , she dropped to her knees , and then yanked my shorts and boxers to my ankles . I went to cover myself , but she already had hold of my hard - on . She grinned her wicked grin . " They can only see you from the chest up because of the hedges , dumb - ass , so shut up and cum in my mouth this time . " And then she swallowed my dick . It felt great , but I felt a little sick when I realized Mr . Smith across the street was sitting on his porch . But he didn 't seem to be paying any attention to me , so after a minute I started to really enjoy the sucking and licking Nina was giving me . After a few minutes , I was ready to cum . Just then , I saw my dad 's car turn into the street . " My dad ! " I practically shrieked . But instead of moving away , Nina started sucking harder . I came as he pulled in , and then I pulled out . " He 's here ! Get up ! " I pulled up my shorts as quick as I could , even though I was still dribbling sperm . She stood up slowly , smiling . Then opened her mouth to show me my jizz still in it . Then she spread some around her lips with her tongue , and swallowed . " Well hi there , you two ! " I thought I was going to faint . Did he see anything ? " Hi Mr . Harper ! I was just asking Jimmy if he likes the new lip gloss I got today . What do you think ? " Even though my dad didn 't seem to suspect anything , I was practically shaking . How could Nina be so calm ? She 'd just been sucking me off ! She had my cum on her lips ! ? ! " Sure ! " I was delighted to have an excuse to get out of the room . I was already looking around in the bathroom when I realized I had never seen her with sunglasses . Then she was at the door . She pulled up her dress , and I could see shiny tracks from her cunt juice on her thighs . She jabbed two fingers into her pussy , and once more , roughly smeared the juice on my lips . " Until next time , Jimmy Harper ! " And then louder , " I guess they 're not here . " And she was gone . Nina took over my life , even though I had only seen her twice . The slide had been one thing , but I couldn 't believe the department store , or blowing me practically in front of my dad . I couldn 't think about anything else , and beat off every chance I got . I even did it once in the back of the car , sitting behind my mom , and that was really weird . And my parents were a little surprised when I started taking baths again , instead of showers . I always beat off at least twice when I did ; I could just picture her in the tub with me . 10 days had gone by , and I had not heard from her . Even though I was terrified of her , it was worth it for the sex . That day , Stacy had come to my school with the soccer team for a game . At the end , we managed a little petting time under the school bleachers . I 'd got my hand inside her bra again , and she was rubbing my pecker through my pants . She was also rubbing her pussy on my leg , although she had on a skirt , and , I assume , panties . Then they announced the busses were leaving and we had to stop . I had to wait till I got home to relieve my aching prick . I loved sucking face with Stacy , but it was awful at the same time ! Why couldn 't I have private time with Stacy instead of wacko Nina ? The next night , I was getting into bed , and had not bothered to put on my pj 's , since I was planning to beat off first . I 'd been thinking about Stacy , and I already had a hard - on . I pulled back the rumpled covers , and nearly leapt out of my skin when I realized that somebody was already there ! I turned around to see Nina with both hands over her mouth , choking with laughter . " It 's not funny ! " I hissed . She didn 't answer , just keep laughing . I went to punch her on the arm , but she grabbed my hand , and pulled me on top of her . I was still mad , but the feel of her skin on mine , my partially erect cock against her stomach , took all the fight out of me . At least she stopped laughing . " Trust me , my little worry wart , I could get in much , much worse trouble than you . But just lie still , and do what I tell you . If you 're good , we 'll have a little adventure , ok ? " " For you parents to go to sleep , dummy . Now shut up and lick . " I did as I was told . Within minutes , she was making her furry sounds , and my dick was achingly hard . She noticed . " Roll over a little bit , your stupid pecker is drilling a hole in my stomach . " I moved , and was rewarded with her hand gently stroking my cock . This was so different from the crazy shit she usually did . It was so . . . nice . " ' Yeah . " And we lay like that for a while , me half on top of her , kissing and licking her tits , and her kneading my pecker . She squeezed a bit harder at one point , and I impulsively bit lightly on one of her nipples . Her gasp told me she 'd liked it . We went on like that , her pulling on my cock becoming more insistent , me occasionally biting her nipples . And then ; " I 'm cumming , Nina . " She smoothly slid out from under me , and into a kneeling position , her lips closing over my cock . I stifled a groan of pleasure as my spunk spewed onto her tongue . She continued to lick and suck until I was limp . " Got something for ya . " Her words were slurred ; she hadn 't swallowed my cum . " Don 't move . And be quiet . " That sounded bad . Then she silently turned around , and sat on my chest ; God , was her cunt hot and wet ! I didn 't immediately register that she had also pinned my arms to my sides with her knees . Then she grabbed my ankles , and tucked one under each of her armpits . Bad was here . . . I was trapped with my bare ass sticking up in the air , pinned down by an occasionally insane girl twice my size . Not to mention we 're both naked with my parents five feet away on the other side of the wall . I gritted my teeth , waiting for what , I didn 't know - but I couldn 't take a chance on my parents hearing . Then I gasped when I felt something wet and warm drip on my asshole . She was spitting my cum on my asshole . Oh shit . . . " Shh ! Fun time , Jimmy . " Then she grabbed one of my asscheeks with one hand , and I felt a finger from her other hand swirling the cum around my butthole . Then her finger tip went in , and I very nearly succeeded in throwing her off , but she held me down . " NINA ! " I hissed as loud as I dared . " Asshole , it 's called an asshole . Now shut up , or I 'll fuck your stupid asshole with your baseball bat ! " and with that , she started jamming her finger deeper in . I was so clenched up , she had to really push . I was nearly in tears , I was so freaked out and humiliated . And it hurt ! But she kept working her finger into my asshole , and then started rubbing her pussy on my chest . After a few minutes , she had it in as far as she could . To make it worse , that made me feel like I had to pee really bad . But I didn 't dare say anything for fear she would do something worse . Suddenly she slid back a bit , and now her cunt was on my face . " Lick ! " she said , and started ass fucking me with her finger . I did what she said , and a few minutes later she started to cum . Suddenly , the finger was gone , and she jammed her face against my ass to muffle her squeals . I thought she was done torturing me , so I jumped when she stuck her tongue into my poor asshole . How much worse could this get ? ! ? Fortunately , she just wiggled it around in there for a minute , and finally backed off . She let my legs down , but continued to gently rub her cunt around on my face . Normally , I wouldn 't have minded , but at the moment , I was just scared to death of what she would do next . I also realized that my neck hurt from having all my weight on it for the last 10 minutes . Then she finally got off , and lay down beside me and started licking her juice off my face . I was so freaked out , it took me a minute to realize that she was licking me with the tongue that had just been shoved up my ass ! " I 'm serious , Jimmy . You have to do what I tell you , but I don 't want you really upset with me either . C ' mon . It 'll make it ok if you punish me , you 'll see . " Nope , I 'm dead serious . In fact , you have to do it , so get up . " She stood , and started pulling me out of the bed . I let her , too scared to resist . Nina flipped on the single overhead bulb . The garage was empty , since we never put the car in it . Nina went right to a shelf , and pulled down what turned out to be her backpack . She pulled out three long strips of cloth , tied a big knot in the middle of one , and then handed them all to me . I had no idea what she was doing , and watched warily as she got down on all fours on the cement floor . " Ok , see where my elbow and knee are touching ? Tie them together with one rag . " I bent to it . " Tighter ! That 's better . Now , go around to the other side , and tie me there . " " Nina , I don 't like this . . . " " Alright , now listen , and do EXACTLY as I tell you . The rag with the knot is a gag , so I don 't wake up the whole neighborhood . Put the knot in my mouth , and tie it tight around my head . NOT YET , stupid , I 'll tell you when . Then , there 's a piece of rubber fan belt in my pack . Go get it ! Now , you 're going to whip me 10 times with it , as hard as you can . " " Of course you didn 't . So it 's only fair that you make me cry . And besides , if you don 't , I 'll beat you till you REALLY cry , got it ? " " And do it hard ; if you don 't , I 'll know , and you better believe I 'll make you pay . Now put the gag on me , and get to work . And don 't forget to untie me when you 're done . Now , GET GOING ! " I tied on the gag , and got the fan belt , but I was scared shitless . The piece of fan belt was about two feet long , and the hard rubber had a surprisingly sharp edge . I 'd never even been in a fight , let alone hurt somebody on purpose . But I was now even more afraid of Nina 's revenge if I didn 't do it . I took a deep breath , and let fly . The belt landed squarely across her ass cheeks , and although I did not " put my back into it , " she flinched . But then her head whipped around , and she gave me such a murderous look that I immediately whipped her again , and much harder . I heard her screech into the gag , and she didn 't look back again . A bright red line appeared across her ass this time , and it upset me so much , I decided to get it over with as quickly as possible , and started flailing away . Around the fifth or sixth hit , all the anger and humiliation she had put me through somehow took over , and in blind frenzy , I started pounding her with all my might . She fell on her side a one point , trying to squirm away from the flying belt , but I was in such a rage I didn 't really notice . I hit her a lot more than 10 times , and when I finally came to my senses , I totally freaked out at what I done ; there were red welts all up and down her naked side , her back , her legs , and drops of blood oozing from a dozen cuts . She would have been sobbing loudly , if not for the gag , and suddenly I was crying too , way harder than I had in years . " I 'm sorry ! I 'm sorry ! I 'm so sorry Nina . " I kept saying it over and over through my sobs as I untied her . I don 't know what I expected her to do , but she just lay there curled on the floor , great shuddering sobs racking her body . Without really thinking , I crouched down beside her , and held her as best I could . We ended up both lying on the cold concrete , with her head on my shoulder . Eventually , both of our tears stopped . I didn 't know what to do or say . I was becoming increasingly afraid that Nina would suddenly get mad , and then give me a beating . So what she finally said totally surprised me . " Jimmy ? " We lay together a while longer , then she got up - gingerly - went to her backpack and pulled her clothes out of it . I got up too . Then with a lot of wincing and grunting that made me feel awful all over again , she pulled them on . She came over and hugged me gently , and then limped out the door and into the early morning darkness . I went up to bed , expecting to be up the rest of the night , but fell asleep instantly . I told my dad I was sick when he tried to wake me for school , and slept till noon . As I stepped into the shower , I realized that I had little spots of blood on my chest and arm , where she had been lying on me . I was nearly sick . It wasn 't until that night that I realized that Nina must have snuck into our house during the day completely naked , and hidden in my room . Although that would usually be an exiting thought , I didn 't even start to get stiff ; I was still horrified and feeling awful about what I 'd done to her . I couldn 't understand how I could do such a thing . At school the next day , the kids were talking about some high school girl who got beat up . There were all kinds of rumors like , a gang that did it , and that she got knifed . Every time one of the kids started talking about it , I felt sick all over again . It was one of the worst days I 'd ever had . Then when my mom and dad arrived to pick me up an hour before the final bell , I was sure they found out , and that I was going to jail . " Jimmy , there 's nothing wrong , but we need to talk about something right away ; that 's why we came to get you , honey . " That should have been reassuring , but I was still feeling panicky . I just said " ok , " and we drove to the house in silence . I followed them in , and mom patted the sofa beside her . Dad paced slowly about the room , like he did when he was trying to figure something out . " Oh Jimmy , you really like her don 't you ? " Mom held me while I cried . I wasn 't really sure how much I liked Nina , but I was crying because I 'd beat the crap out of her . Mom kept saying comforting things , which somehow made it worse , but I finally managed to pull myself together . " She says that somebody grabbed her , but she didn 't see them . But the police are pretty sure that her father did it , and she just won 't say so because she 's so afraid of him . It turns out that he did a lot of awful things to her , like locking her in a closet for days at a time , and stealing her money . There 's worse , but , um , you 're too young for that kind of ugliness . Anyway , he 's going to prison . Even if he didn 't give her that awful beating , he 's facing a number of child abuse and endangerment charges that will send him to jail for a long time . Now remember , Jimmy , you are not to repeat a word of this . Jimmy ? " " Jimmy , are you ok ? " The slight edge of panic in my mom 's voice brought me back . " Uh , yeah . . . yeah , its , I just can 't believe it , is all . But why are you telling me all this stuff ? " I cringed again , sure I was about to get in trouble , somehow . " Well , when she called the police yesterday morning , they took her right to the hospital . While the doctors were examining her , she kept asking for me . You wouldn 't know it , but I 've had a couple of very nice chats with that girl . She acts tough , but she very sweet , although god knows why considering what her father was doing to her . Anyway , the social worker assigned to her called , and I met with her and Nina at the hospital . Where I 'm going with all this is that the magistrate agreed with the social worker that Nina could stay with us for a while . " " What ? ! ? " I wanted to shout , ' You don 't know her ! she 's nuts ! She made me lick her pussy on the sliding board ! She jerked me off in a restaurant and made me feed it to her on a sandwich ! She put her tongue in my ass ! ! ! ' " What 's wrong , Jimmy ? I thought you 'd like the idea of helping her out . " But I couldn 't tell her what I was thinking , and I was too dazed to come up with a reasonable sounding excuse to keep Nina out of the house . So I went into ' good boy ' mode , and just told her that I was surprised , and sure , I thought that would be great if we could help , and like that . Inside , though , I was freaking out . Dad was talking ; " That 's settled then . You 're a good kid , Jimmy Harper . I 'll call the case worker , and we 'll go pick her up . " " Fine . Just gotta go . " That was a lie . I went to the bathroom and threw up . 20 minutes later , we were in the Child Protective Services lobby , chatting with Nina 's case worker . Well , they were chatting . I was just standing there in a daze . I thought I knew what had happened , but I couldn 't believe it . It seemed much more likely that Nina had manipulated my parents into taking her in so she could take her revenge on me at her leisure . Which she would probably do anyway , even if my wild idea was right . After a few minutes , they went into the case worker 's office , and Nina came out . She was wearing a loose sundress , and it was easy to see the welts and bruises on her right arm and leg . I could suddenly picture the other ones lining her backside , and I almost started to blubber again . But I was too drained out . And too scared . I glanced up at her , and then back at the floor . " Jimmy , I need to talk to you before they come out , but I , I can 't sit , you know ? So could you , um , please stand up ? " I stood . " Jimmy , I just want you to know that I 'm not mad at you . Not at all . Not only did you save me from my psycho dad , but . . . " She paused so long , that I finally looked up again ; she was crying ! " But , after I saw you in that rage , I . . . I kept asking myself how such a sweet , harmless kid could go crazy like that . " She paused again , gathering herself . " And suddenly I knew , it was because I had been so mean to you , just like my dad was to me , and I felt so awful . " then she cried quietly for a minute . " I 'm sorry , Nina . I , I didn 't know about your dad . I still don 't , but mom says he was , uh , not a nice man . " " No . No he isn 't . But look , I 'll never be able to tell you how sorry I am , and I wouldn 't blame you if you hated me . " " After what I did to you ? You don 't owe me anything , Nina ; nothing at all . I can 't ever forgive myself , I don 't , I don 't . . . " I bit my lip to keep from crying again . " Jimmy , Jimmy , listen ; It 's not your fault . I mean . . . look I also decided that I will always be honest with you , so I have to tell you something else , and it 's pretty bad . I set you up . " " Well , the whole thing was kind of weird ; you trying to make me mad , then insisting that I punish you . And it was awfully convenient that those rags and that … that belt were so handy . But I was so freaked out , that I didn 't think about it . Then when mom told me about your dad , I suddenly thought maybe you set the whole thing up to get away from him , but I couldn 't believe it . I still don 't ! Why didn 't you just tell somebody ? " " I was afraid nobody would believe me , and if he found out , it would have been a lot worse . But I though if I had black and blue marks , they would have to believe me , see ? Please . I didn 't mean to make you cry ; I just wanted you to be mad , so you would do it . Honest . Don 't tell . Please ? " She whispered so softly , I almost couldn 't hear her . " Thank you . " And she bent down and kissed me on the forehead . I was starting to feel a little better , but then the moment was broken ; " Nina , just . . . I was going to say make yourself comfortable , but that would be a silly thing to say , wouldn 't it ? Don 't worry , dear , we should only be a few minutes . " " Jimmy , we have the problem of sleeping arrangements . Because of her experience , Nina is afraid to be alone , and may be for a while . Not an uncommon response to what she went through . Your parents and I have a proposal , but let me emphasize that if you have any concerns or reservations about it , you have to say so . I want you to promise that you will be honest with me . This is very important . I think we may be asking too much of a 13 year old boy , but I 'll let your mother explain the idea , and you tell me what you think . " Mom turned to me . " Jimmy , there are only two options , since our home is so small . One is that Nina will sleep in my room with me , and your dad will bunk in with you . Nina doesn 't like the idea , because she would feel bad about pushing your dad out of his own bedroom . " " Jimmy , " said the case worker , " Before we go any further , let me ask you a question . It may seem kind of silly , but humor me . Do you have a girlfriend ? " A sudden intuition came to me , and I lied without even thinking about it . " NO ! I mean , no ma ' am . I mean , I have some friends who are girls , but why would you want to make out with your friend ? ! ? I mean . . . " and trailed off . Mom nodded , and turned back to me . " The other option is for Nina to sleep in your room . Now wait , before you answer ; I know you would be giving up your privacy , and it might just be too weird to have a girl in your room . Either one of those is a perfectly ok reason to say no . It really is , understand ? " " Well , no . . . " I tried to look confused , " What 's the big deal ? Really , it would be cool to have Nina in there ; it would be just like having a big sister , right ? I mean , I don 't have to sleep in the same bed with her . . . uh . . . do I ? " And I tried to look suddenly concerned as I said it . Hours later , after a short ride home , dinner , and a boring game of Parcheesi , ( which Nina and dad seemed to really enjoy ; go figure ) , Nina and I were in our beds . She was in my bed temporarily , because it was less painful to get in and out of . My parents had both come in to say goodnight , and distribute hugs , which they had not done for years , and we listened to their steps retreating to their room . " Suck cocks ? Well I like it better during an adventure , " she giggled , " but , yes , I like it , so what ? Now do you want a blow job or not ? " After a little experimenting , I ended up slouched across the bed with her head on my stomach . This way , she could easily get to my pecker without having to move too much . The first time , I came in about 30 seconds ; I hadn 't beat off for two days . Then we just lay there ; I stroked her hair , she played with my dick and balls . We talked off and on , and I came two more times before we fell asleep . Fortunately , having her head on my stomach , also meant on my bladder . Fortunately , because otherwise my parents would have found us like that in the morning . I had to go to school , but it had been decided that Nina would stay home until she healed up some . But when I was home , even if we only had two minutes , Nina made sure she had some part of her body in contact with my pecker , and made sure I came at least a few times a day . I beat off a couple of times , but just to amuse her , not because she wasn 't keeping my balls drained . One night , I asked if her offer to fuck me was still on . She was obviously getting better , and she seemed to be in a good mood . Her answer surprised me , though . " I 've been meaning to talk to you about that . First of all , I shouldn 't swear so much around you ; you 're too young to be using words like that , and I 'm sorry . So I want you to say , ' making love , ' Ok ? It 's a whole different feeling when you think about making love , not fucking . Oh , I said it again ! Sorry . I know you probably don 't really get what I 'm saying , but please just trust me , ok ? " " Second , I know I said I would , but this is one promise I 'm going to go back on . But I 'm not sorry about that , and here 's why : Your first time should be with somebody you really care about , and ideally it will also be the first time for that somebody too . Not some old whore like me . " " Ok , maybe that 's a little harsh . I 've only been with two guys , and my first time was really sweet . I want you to have that too , ok ? So no nookie for you ; you 'll just have to make do with getting sucked off - I mean , oral sex - a few times a day . " Yeah , I 'd say that 's pretty close . Besides , you may have that first time sooner than you think , you know ? So are we cool ? " The only thing was , she wouldn 't let me kiss her , feel her up , or anything else . She kept saying that she was still too sore , although she didn 't act like it . Then Saturday came . I woke up with Nina on my bed , sucking my cock . " Shh . I told them last night that I didn 't think I was ready for 6 hours in the car . Then I told them that I didn 't want to be alone all day , and that you had agreed to stay with me . " She resumed her blowjob . " But , but , why . . . " She just giggled at my confusion . I was still sleepy headed , and suddenly I was scared that the old Nina was back - although her mouth sure felt good on my pecker . She giggled again around my dick . " Well , yes , but I guarantee that you 'll like this one , little Jimmy Harper ! Now shut up and cum ! Sorry ; I mean , would you please shut up and cum ? We have to get ready . " I just sighed in reply . A few minutes later , I was limp , and following Nina to the bathroom . She ran a bath , and had me get in . " You just relax , Jimmy , and I 'll be back in a few minutes , ok ? " " Um , ok . . . " She had a mischievous grin on her face as she left , and even though she had been great to me all week , I was still feeling a little nervous . A few minutes later , she returned with a bowl of cereal and some orange juice . " Want me to feed it to you ? " she asked , giggling . " Hi , uh , this is taking a little longer than I thought , " she said , dipping a hand in the tub . " Could be a little warmer . " She added some hot water to the tub , and left again . " Back soon ! " She seemed happy and excited about something , but I couldn 't imagine what ; making me breakfast ? She 'd already done that . The only other things I could think of were bad . Finally , Nina reappeared , but just stuck her head in the door . " Jimmy ? I have a surprise for you , so close your eyes ! " " OK . " Now I was totally bewildered . What the heck was she up to ? ! ? Maybe she got me an Xbox ? But she wouldn 't give it to me while I was in the tub , would she ? ! ? Nina giggled at that . Then I heard her stepping into the tub and sitting down at the other end , her legs bumping into mine as she go situated . Then . . . nothing . I could hear a little moving around at the other end of the tub , but that was it . " Um , can I open my eyes now ? " No answer . " Nina ? " All I got for answer was a giggle . But ? It didn 't sound right . But if it wasn 't Nina , then . . . starting to panic , my eyes flew open . " STACY ? ! ? " I started to stand up , realized I was naked , splashed back down , realized she could still see me through the water , started to turn around , and then it hit me ; Stacy was naked , too ! And at this point , she was also laughing . " Sorry Jimmy , " she giggled , " Nina thought it would be a fun way to get us together ! " " But , but , but . . . " I spluttered . This just made her laugh more , but aside from the shock , I couldn 't think of a thing I would have liked better . I 'd trade a naked Stacy for a nasty old Xbox anytime ! I still couldn 't talk though . " Stacy ! Wow ! I mean , this is so . . . so . . . gosh you 're beautiful ! " I meant all of her , but even at 13 , she was more developed than Nina , and that 's what I was looking at when I said it . I realized it as I said it , and then turned a lovely shade of pink . " No ! I mean . . . I . . . Oh crap . . . " and with that clever pronouncement , I buried my face in my hands , now totally mortified . I heard her moving , and when I looked up , her face was inches from mine . " You are the sweetest person , ever , Jimmy Harper . " And then she kissed me , and it was wonderful . As we kissed , we relaxed against the back of the tub . I became aware of her bare tits pressed against my chest , and felt like a mild electric charge was working its way down my body . I 'd felt her boobs before , but that was inside of a bra and a tee shirt . Having nothing between us like this was fantastic . My cock , of course , was already sticking straight up . I was sort of annoyed by that - even though we were both naked and kissing in a warm tub of water , I didn 't want her to think that sex was all I could think about . But Stacy didn 't give any indication that she was bothered at all . In fact , she moved a leg so that she was straddling one of my thighs , and began to slowly hump her pussy on it as we continued necking . It was divine ; I didn 't ever want it to end . Then I felt her fingers tracing around the head of my pecker . " What ? Nina said . . . She , oh my god , what , what ? ! ? " " It 's ok ! " Tracy said with a giggle . " Calm down . Didn 't you wonder how I ended up in this bathtub with you , silly boy ? " Nope , never entered my mind , but now that she mentioned it . . . " Sooo , I 'm an idiot , I admit it . Maybe you could just explain everything to me ? " Tracy giggled again , kissed me deeply , and leaned back . She had stopped humping my leg , but she was still teasing the hell out of my cock . " Ok . Two days ago , I woke up with a fever , so I couldn 't go to school , even though I wasn 't really sick - you know the rules . " " Jimmy , it 's OK ! Really ! " she kissed me again , and continued . " Listen , I don 't want to waste our time together today , so I 'm going to tell you exactly what we talked about , OK ? " " Let 's see . , She said that she made you have sex with her , but she shouldn 't have done that . She said you didn 't have intercourse , but she was going to , but then after she got beat up , she realized how mean she had been to you , and that she wanted your first time to be special . I thought that was really cool . Then she said she 'd been having oral sex with you all week to make up for being so bad to you . At first I didn 't like that , but then she said she didn 't know that I liked you so much , and since you get erections all the time , it seemed like a good way to make things up to you . And she told me she wouldn 't do it any more if I didn 't want her to . But I thought about it , and since I can 't take care of you because we hardly ever get to see each other , I thought it wouldn 't be fair to you if I told her to stop , see ? " " Yeah . . . no . . you shouldn 't . . . I mean , I shouldn 't . . . " I 'd just been enjoying my blow jobs all week , and although I 'd certainly thought about Stacy , I had not thought about how she might feel . I was totally flustered , and feeling acutely embarrassed . " Sorry . " " Don 't be , really . Nina said that we were just kids , even if we both seem to be pretty horny for our age . She said we would both make mistakes , but we have to learn from them , not just feel bad , or be mad . " " But . . . " I knew what I wanted to say , but I didn 't know how to start . Then suddenly , I knew how to say it . " Stacy , I care about you a lot . I mean , a lot more than a friend . Nina is , gosh , I don 't know , but I could never care about her like I do about you . " " Jimmy , Jimmy , " she said , snuggling up against me . " Don 't you see ? That 's what makes you so special , that you would care so much . But it 's really ok , understand ? In fact we decided she should do you this morning , so you wouldn 't come right away when I got in the tub . " " You . . . she ? " Tracy was smiling again . " Well , um , ' thank you ? ' But I won 't let her do it any more . " " Yes you will , because I want you to let her suck you . " " NO ! I . . . no , I don 't want her in here with us . OK , I believe you . I just have to get used to the idea . I always think about you when she 's . . . doing it . " A little while later , I came in her hand , and within moments , Stacy started making little squealing noises through clenched teeth , went rigid and shook for a few seconds . It was so different from Nina 's orgasms , that I didn 't realize what was happening for a moment . Then Stacy started kissing my neck lightly , and crying . Now what ? ! ? " Yeah , " she sniffled , " I just wanted to cum with you for so long , and it was so wonderful , and you 're so sweet , and . . . I 'm sorry , I 'm just so happy . " And suddenly , I was really happy , too . In fact all I could think about was that I was in love , even though I was scared to say it . I just told her that I was really happy , too . We just lay their while Stacy quieted down . I stroked her hair and back , while she gently rubbed cum around my pecker . We probably would have stayed longer but the water was getting cold . " We should probably get out , hunh ? " For answer , she slid down , and licked a little cum off the end of my cock . I could only see the back of her head , but she seemed to be considering how it tasted . I guess it was ok , because then she proceeded to lick up all the jizz from my cock , stomach , and her hand . Of course , my pecker was standing up again before she was done , and I was feeling flustered , but Stacy was delighted . Stacy laughed . " No ! I just forgot something we might want later . " I raised an eyebrow at her , but we were in the kitchen by then , where she grabbed a plastic grocery bag off a chair . I then realized that the clothes hanging on the chair must be hers , and even though I had a hand on her naked bottom , that made me even more horny . I turned to her , and kissed her , pressing her close to me . My boner slid between her thighs , the top of it rubbing against her pussy . We both gave an involuntary shudder . Stacy pulled back a bit , " Bed ? " I thought about it . If it had been Nina , it would have been too weird . But for some reason , it was ok with Stacy . And it was certainly a lot bigger than my bed . " No , it 's ok . Now can we get back to kissing ? " Stacy laughed at that , then fell on top of me , burying her tongue in my mouth . We kissed , groped and licked . Stacy came again while I licked her pussy , and I came in her mouth . We took a breather , although I still had a finger in her twat , while she idly twiddled my hardening dick . We talked a bit about how wonderful it was , and then Stacy rolled onto her back , spreading her knees . I started to climb on top , then stopped . She looked at me questioningly , then smiled as she whispered in my ear , " Get the bag . " " Of course ! " I opened the box , and pulled out a pre - filled inserter that looked like a hypodermic without the needle . I hadn 't seen one before , but it was pretty obvious what to do with it . I teased her clit with my tongue as I pressed the inserter into her pussy . She was incredibly wet , and groaned loudly , arching her clit into my mouth . I threw the empty inserter over my shoulder , and looked up to see Stacy smiling at me . She was holding an unwrapped condom , which she lovingly unrolled over my cock . " Now " she whispered . In reply , I kissed her deeply , as I climbed between her thighs . I wasn 't sure what to do , so I pressed the head of my penis against her cunt lips , and just held it there . Our mouths still pressed together , Stacy groaned again , and lifted her ass up off the bed , pushing her pussy up , and my cock inside . It felt so good , I almost couldn 't stand it . Then she started fucking herself on my meat , heaving her ass up higher and higher , forcing me deeper into her hole . She gave out a little cry with each push , and at last I pushed back , forcing my cock completely into her . She made a drawn out sound between a wail and a squeal . Her body stiffened , and keeping her ass in the air , first one leg whipped up off the bed wrapping around by own ass , then the other , her ankles locking . Stacy ground her cunt against me , and I moved in unison with her . I would have cum then , if she hadn 't drained my balls just 10 minutes earlier . Her sounds became louder and louder , and she started thrashing her head from one side to the other , as an intense orgasm overwhelmed her . Her arms shot straight out to her sides , and she grabbed handfuls of sheets , all the while trying to crush my straining cock deeper inside of her . As her orgasm subsided , she slowly relaxed down onto the bed . I began sliding my dick in and out of her . She gave a little gasping moan with each thrust , and after a minute , Stacy grabbed my ass with her hands , encouraging me to come down harder and faster each time . Within moments , I was banging away furiously , so hard that I was now bouncing her across the bed . Then suddenly I was struck by my own orgasm . I spontaneously grabbed her shoulders , crusher her up against my cock while my juice shot out in almost painfully pleasurable spurts . At the same time , pinned by my throbbing pecker , Stacy came again , stiffening , using her feet and hand to squash us closer , as she ground her cunt against me once more . At last we collapsed ; spent , sweating , and breathing like racehorses . I started to move , thin " Keep it in , keep it in , ok , Jimmy ? " She panted . " I 'd love to , " and I meant it . We kept my cock in her pussy for the next three hours . We took breaks to kiss and cuddle , and catch our breaths , but mostly we made love , and lost count of how many times we came . We broke twice to change condoms , and add more spermicide , and my dick slipped out once while we were banging doggy style , but otherwise we managed to keep it in inside her the whole time , never completely getting soft . Early in the afternoon , her love juice was starting to run out , I was not getting completely hard any more , and we both realized we were starving . In the kitchen , we filled up a tray with junk food , ice cream and some fruit , and took it back to the bed . We were surprised to see what a mess we had made . The top sheet and covers were on the floor , there were wet spots all over , and three discarded rubbers with my jizz leaking from them . " Well , we going to have to clean up anyway , so a few crumbs won 't hurt , " observed Stacy as she climbed on the bed . " Yipes ! It 's cold ! " she squeaked as she landed in a wet spot . " I think we can probably warm it up , don 't you ? " and we did . We ate , smeared food on each other and licked it off , wrestled when I tried to put some ice cream in her pussy , cuddled , kissed , and made love till around 4 in the afternoon . We 'd used up the condoms and the spermicide , and were just kissing and fondling each other at that point , when Nina interrupted us . " Yeah , " Stacy answered dreamily , " C ' mon in . " I was so happy , and feeling so satisfied , and in love , that it didn 't even occur to me to worry about the fact that we were naked , arms and legs twined together . " Sorry to break up the party , " said Nina , stepping into the room , " but . . . Oh my god . . . " Her eyes widened as she looked around the room . " Oh my god . I could tell you guys were having fun in here from the noise , but . . . Wow ! " Alarmed by her tone , we sat up , and looked around , really seeing the room for the first time in hours . The floor and bed were littered with condoms , condom wrappers , inserters , food , things we 'd accidently knocked off the night tables . . . Wow indeed . " Jezis , you guys , this is amazing ! I should have come in here sooner ! Listen ; the ' rents will be here in about an hour , so we have to get moving . " " It 's not that bad ; we can do this , " she said taking control . " First , Stacy , let go of Jimmy 's dick , " Her hand leapt away . " Next , both of you , into the shower , and make it quick - no fucking around . I mean , oh hell , just get going ! " We nodded , raced off to the shower , and that 's how it went . We got cleaned up , the sheets were washed , the trash taken out , the mattress flipped , the bed re - made , and the bedroom floor mopped . An hour later , Stacy and I plopped down exhausted on the sofa , and a moment later , Nina joined us . Mystified , we both started looking around . And then down , and then at each other . . . Stacy and I were still in our birthday suits . We both turned pink , and Nina laughed as we went off to get out clothes . We got Stacy 's from the kitchen , and went back to my bedroom to dress . I pulled a pair of boxers out of my dresser , but when I turned around , Stacy was just staring at me , her clothes still just hanging over her arm . Suddenly it hit me that our magic day was ending , and I didn 't want it to . Ever . Reading my mind , Stacy said , " I can 't believe it 's over ! " as we ran into each other 's arms . She sobbed very quietly as we kissed and hugged . " Me too . " That was all she said . But we were both wondering how we could get together again like this - it could be weeks , or even months . We finally broke apart , dressed , and moped back out to the living room , hand - in - hand . " Hey ! Be quiet and let me talk ! " She looked sternly at us , but we could tell she was trying not to smile . " Jimmy ; your folks think I 'm taking you to the park tomorrow afternoon , and Stacy , you are supposedly going shopping with me . I think we were both staring with our mouths open . Nina just smiled and continued . " In fact , you 're both going to a cabin on a private lake near here . Will that do ? " We both started talking at once again . It turned out that that Nina had been keeping the cabin clean for a local family , and they had invited her to use it when they were not there . I don 't think we could have been more excited . Nina only made us promise not make such big a mess next time . After that , Nina made sure that we got to see each other at least once or twice a week , even if it was only after school at the mall . It was wonderful and awful - we could hardly bare to be apart , and we talked on the phone constantly . Meanwhile , Nina also made sure that my balls were well drained . And every time , Stacy wanted to know where we were when Nina sucked me off , and what we were wearing , and how long it took , and how much cum there was . I thought I would hate talking about it , but Stacy would always masturbate while I did , and a lot of times she would have at least a little orgasm . I seldom had enough privacy to jerk off while we talked , but I did it whenever I could . That was my life through the rest of the spring and that summer . In fall , Nina went off to a two year college , but Stacy and I started going to the same school . That made it easier to find time alone together , and it was wonderful . I lost touch with Nina , but I just saw her again recently . Well , a picture , anyway . A friend sent me a photo of a couple making love while sky diving . There were no names , but the girl was definitely Nina . And from the looks of it , a very happy Nina . I was glad she was still having adventures , but I was just as glad that I wasn 't a part of them anymore . |
Oh damn , here we go again . I don 't know why I let Don talk me into this anymore . It 's always the same thing . These college girls always want to go out on a first date as a double . They think that it will make them safer . What it means is that Don needs someone to go with him on a blind date about once a month . Since a blind date is the only kind I can get , I get drafted to go with him . Don is my best friend , and when girls aren 't involved , he is a great guy . We can make music and develop plans for the future together with ease . The problem is that I am not very good looking , and I have trouble talking to girls ; while Don is very handsome , and has lines that could make a gigolo blush . Tonight was the same situation that happened most of the time . Don was going out with the blond goddess , and I was with her brown haired roommate . The poor girl wasn 't unattractive , but she was overwhelmed by her friend . My problem was that my date could not take her eyes off of Don . I couldn 't even get her to go out on the dance floor unless Don was out there as well . Unfortunately , Don had conned me into driving , and I could not leave before he and blondie were ready to go . One thing was certain ; I was not going to get caught going parking with them again . I had done that once , and had trouble sleeping for weeks afterward . What hurt the most was that I had had a crush on the girl for months , and had to listen to my best friend take her cherry . I was not going to do that again . " You know , all you have to do is wait a week or two and he 'll ask you out . Don never dates a girl for more than two weeks . I 'll let him know that you are interested . " Saturday morning I was heading out of my apartment to go running . I alternated running , lifting weights , and swimming to keep in shape . On this morning , a little over a week from the date with blondie and her friend , I stepped out of the door to be confronted by blondie . " If you are referring to how Don treats women , then you would not have believed me . Why haven 't any of your sorority sisters said anything to you ? Don has been going through your dorm floor by floor ; I figured you knew all about him by now . " " Yeah , I know . I 've seen it more times than I can count . Every girl thinks that she can change him . She has something that no one else has and can hold on to him . They are all wrong . I 'm not sure that Don even likes girls ; I think he just uses them . He is probably closet gay and doesn 't know it . " " He isn 't causing any pain , you do that to yourselves . Don doesn 't lie or promise anything . I heard him tell you that he was not looking for a long term commitment , and you ignored it . You beautiful girls take it the worst . You get a little of your own medicine and can 't believe it could happen to you . Now if you don 't mind , I need to run today . " I took off running and left her standing there with her mouth open . When I got back 5 miles later , she was gone . I still didn 't know her name . That afternoon I was cleaning out my car , a 1969 Dodge Dart Swinger 340 . I had gotten it when a cousin had not come back from ' Nam . My aunt did not want the memories around , so she sold it to me at a good price . The car was lime green with a vinyl roof and a rally stripe across the trunk . It was a fun and cheap rocket . " Oww . Damn , that hurt . What the hell do you want from me ? Of course you are beautiful , but you don 't need me to tell you that . You know what you look like . You 've played men your whole life based upon your appearance . You just don 't know how to act when someone doesn 't fall at your feet . Get used to it blondie , there are a lot of beautiful women out there , and this is going to happen once in a while . Some guys are not affected by your looks and will not bow and scrape to you . " I sighed , " I don 't know that I will for much longer . Don thinks that he is doing me a favor and that maybe one of these girls will like me . He doesn 't realize that when we are together it just emphasizes how homely I am . He thinks that all I need to do is to have a little confidence and I will get my own dates . But then , he has never had to deal with rejection . I bet you never have either , huh blondie ? " " No , I haven 't , and I must admit that it is not a very pleasant feeling . You are not homely Mark , I would say that plain is a better description of your looks , but that could be changed with a little work . I heard Don say that you were a freshman like me , but I know that he is a junior , how are you two friends ? " " I did a tour for Uncle and Don didn 't . We were friends all through high school and played in a couple of bands together . He is about the only guy I knew back then who is still in town , so we hooked up when I got back . I need to get ready for work , so unless you have something else you want to say , goodbye . " What in the hell was going on here ? Either this girl was as ditzy as a basketball , or she had an ulterior motive . I just didn 't know what that could be . " Yes , I 'll give you a lift , but I have to get ready first . I work at Noble Roman 's on the levy and I can drop you on the way . Would you like to come in while I change , or stay here with the car ? " She got a very satisfied expression . Okay , now I understood a little bit better . She was manipulating me and thought that she was back in control . Should I shock her , or play along to see what she had in mind ? She didn 't say anything , just smiled and pointed at the building . I led her in , and at my apartment I waved her in through the door . " You know , if you are going to keep popping up here , I ought to know your name . I am sure Don introduced you , but I wasn 't paying much attention as I didn 't expect to see you again . " " Okay , that explains why you kept calling me blondie . I wondered why you were being so rude ; my name is Robin , Robin Howell . I know that your first name is Mark , but Don didn 't mention your last name . " Robin sat down on my wood framed couch , " Coke will be fine . This is really a very nice place . Not what I would expect from a college freshman . " I handed her a coke . " Thank you , now I really have to get ready for work . You can watch TV if you want to , or listen to some music ; I shouldn 't be too long . " Work was the normal Saturday night in a college town . We sold pizza and beer and the place was jumping . I spent a lot of my time in back preparing more supplies for the pizza line . The business during the day had been unusually brisk and the prepared items were low . At about 11 : 30 I was back out at the counter taking orders , when Robin came up . I had to put a stop to this . I pointed to the end of the counter out of the way and met her over there . " Look here Robin , this has got to stop . As a matter of pride , I do not go out with Don 's castoffs . I know that you are feeling hurt and need to be wanted again , but you are barking up the wrong tree . I apologize if I have you wrong , but please quit following me . Unlike my friend , I am looking for a long term commitment , and it will not be with anyone who looks like you . " The betrayal in her eyes would haunt me for a while , but I had seen worse . My dreams were already pretty gruesome places ; this wouldn 't make much of a dent on them . My fun in the Far East for Uncle Sugar still dominated most of my nightmares . " Yes , you are , and that is the problem . You have already shown yourself to be vain and shallow . Beautiful women have way too many temptations to cheat , and most do . I need someone who wants to have a stable home and take care of our children without my having to wonder where she is . You would be way too much trouble . There would always be guys flirting with you and trying to take you away from me , and at some point you would go . I don 't need that kind of country western song life . If you still need confirmation of your appeal , go bat your eyes at Bill over there on the register ; he 'll be glad to take you out . Now I have work to do ; goodbye . " So much for the idea of playing along . I left her crying with her head in her hands and went back into the back of the store . She was gone when I came back out . I wonder if she took my advice and approached Bill ? He didn 't say anything , so I guess not . The manager 's wife , Marsha , cornered me during cleanup . " I heard what you said to that poor girl Mark . You were very cruel to her , and you need to know that not all women are like that . How did someone so young get so disillusioned ? " " The number of ' Dear John ' letters that arrived in country was amazing . Every one of the guys who got them had been showing pictures of cheerleaders and models . The guys with plain little homemakers were safe . That is how I got so cynical . This girl has been stalking me all day , and I had to put a stop to it . Being nice didn 't do any good , so I had to get rude . I hope that it worked , because I don 't need to have anything to do with a girl like her . All these prom queens are too spoiled to make a good wife ; I need someone much more basic . All she is trying to do is to take revenge on my friend by dating , then dumping me . She has no actual interest in a lump like me . " " You are wrong Mark , but I can see that you 're unlikely to change your mind . Please don 't be too harsh with her if she persists . I 'll try to watch out for her and keep her away when you are working . That is the best that I can do . " Sunday afternoon I was popping popcorn , waiting for Don to come over and watch football with me . My TV was bigger than his , and his mother would not let him keep enough beer in the house to make it all the way through two games . I had a case of Old Milwaukee in the fridge just waiting for him . The door bell chimed , so I hollered for him to come on in . The door opened slowly , and I glanced over , only to see Robin timidly enter the room . Oh damn , what am I going to have to do to get rid of this girl ? " Robin ! What in the hell are you doing here ? I thought that I made it plain to you that I did not want to see you any more . You should have taken my advice and asked Bill out , he would have been thrilled . " As I was saying this Don walked in through the still open door and looked at Robin in amazement . He probably thought that she was here to try and get him to take her back . I almost wished that he would . He then proceeded to say almost the same thing I had . He looked at me with amazement then . " Why would you want to ? No more dates than you go on , I would think that you would welcome the chance to be with a girl like Robin . " " I can get my own damn girl Don ; I don 't need your fucking leftovers . The fact that she has been with you , is enough to make sure that I never want to touch her . I just can 't make her understand that . She thinks that she can manipulate me like she has all the other men in her life , until she met you . Now she needs to treat me like shit to show that she still can . I don 't need this , and I 'm not going to put up with it . " I was very angry by this point . I had pretty much decided that I was done hanging out with Don . My conscience would not allow me to overlook his actions any more . I had been alone for a long time ; I could stand it for a while longer . Most people that said they were my friends were just a drain on my time anyway . I could put more effort into my studies if I didn 't have to take time with them . " What good would that have done ? You have been the same since I met you 6 years ago . I 've ignored it for the most part , but after a while it starts to get to me . I think that you had better watch TV at home from now on . " " Mark , I came by to tell you that you had it wrong . I was interested in you , but it had nothing to do with how Don treated me . I was how you had treated me , like a gentleman . Up until last night and today you had treated me very nice , and I liked it . I wanted to see more of you and be friends . " " Yeah , I know ; friend , but not boyfriend . I 've heard it about a dozen times before , and it doesn 't hurt any less now than it did then . I don 't need your pity any more than I do Don 's . Now would you both please leave ? I have some school work to get done . " " Come on Robin , I think that we have exposed some very raw nerves . Mark isn 't responsible for what he is saying now and we need to leave . I 'll try to talk to him after he calms down . " As he was saying this , Don was leading a very stunned Robin back out the door . I was yelling at the top of my lungs by this time . I slammed the door behind them and shot the bolt home . I then leaned against the door and cried . I never cried , but that is what happened . Of course I didn 't get any school work done . After a while I put on shorts and a sweat shirt and went for a run . I don 't know how far I ran , but I suddenly realized that it was getting dark , and I had no idea where I was . I was lucky that instincts had taken over when I started out , because I had buckled on my fanny pack with my apartment keys , and my wallet . I remembered seeing a small shopping plaza a few blocks before I had stopped . I went back there and there was a restaurant with a pay phone . I got change and my location from a waitress and called a cab . In later years it would be learned that what I had just gone through had a name . Post - traumatic stress disorder , or PTSD . Not much was known about it now , but whole books would be written about it in the future . Right now I was embarrassed by my actions , and I had no idea how to correct them . There was no way to apologize for my words . I had hurt two people with no excuse . " Mark ? " Asked my father , " Are you alright ? Your mother just talked to Don , and she is worried about you . Why don 't you come on over to the house for dinner and we 'll talk a bit . " This was probably a good idea , as I had said . My folks were good , solid people , and if anyone could help me with this it would be them . They lived in the northern part of town just across the river . I could have lived with them , but after my stint in the Army I was used to having a lot more freedom than that would have afforded me . With the GI bill and my job I was doing okay financially and saw no reason to go back home . I got a quick shower and drove over to my parents ' house . Mom met me at the back door and gave me a big hug . I hugged her back , then picked her up and carried her into the kitchen , where I set her back on her feet next to her chair . " Aw mom , I lift more than that when I am unloading bags of flour at the pizza shop . Hi dad , I 'm glad you called . I need to talk to someone , I need some help . " " Your friend called Mark , he was concerned for you . Don says that he has never seen you angry like that before , and he is not sure what he did to cause it . He also says that the young lady is beside herself with grief and pain . He says that you hurt her a lot . What is going on son , what is bothering you ? " My mom asked . My folks were not demonstrative in their affections , not to each other and not to me . But I never for one second doubted that they loved me and wanted the best for me . I could see the worry in their eyes , and I was still not sure how to respond . " I 'm not sure what it is mom . It has been building up for a long time , ever since I got back , and it just exploded today . I get so frustrated by how I am treated by girls my age . They all act as if I am their brother or something , yet they fall all over Don . They all say that they want a nice guy , then go for the bad one every time . You 've told me before that I just have to be patient , but it is getting old . Don thinks that he is helping me , but he just makes me more frustrated . Now this girl is throwing herself at me , and I can 't trust it . I know that if I let her get to me , she 'll just dump me later . For some reason it all came to a head today and I exploded . I know that I hurt them both , but I couldn 't help myself . I suddenly felt so much pain and betrayal that I couldn 't stand it , and I let it out at them . I would apologize , but there is nothing I could say that would help . The bad part is that I can 't say that it won 't happen again . I feel like a spring under pressure and I am likely to explode at any time . The best thing would be for them to stay away from me , I 'm simply not stable . " " I think that we need to get in touch with VA and have you talk to someone about this son . You should not be having problems like that at this late date . There is definitely something wrong . " " Okay , but can you talk to Don for me and try to explain ? I don 't know what to say to him , and there is no way that I can talk to Robin . She must hate me now , which is probably a good thing . " " If you just say to him what you did to us he 'll understand . I 'm sure that he will forgive you . Don has been your friend for a long time . " " I 'm not sure that I want him to mom , I can no longer ignore his actions , and I doubt that I can convince him to change . I think I would be better off without any friends . If there is no one around me , then I can 't hurt any one else . " " That 's no way to live son . A man needs to share his life with people , or it has no meaning . You need to make more friends , not less . " I stayed in my old room that night . It was somehow comforting , and I slept better than I had for weeks . I had to get up early so I would have time to stop by my apartment and pick up my books and such for class . That day and the next two I went through in a daze . I had no idea what went on in class and I was at work going through the motions . Marsha was spending a lot of time with me at work , but not talking much . I just did what I had to and nothing more . Wednesday I was to be off work , and got home from classes not knowing what I was going to do . When I got to my door , I just stopped and stared . Robin was sitting on the floor with her back against my door . " Please don 't get upset Mark . I really need to talk to you . Marsha told me that you were off tonight and this was all that I could think of to do . " I shrugged and held my hand down for her . She took it and a shock passed through me . This was the first time that we had actually touched . I lifted her up beside me and unlocked the door . I led her in and pulled out a seat at the kitchen table then proceeded to make coffee . " I don 't seem to have much choice here . I 'd say that I 'm sorry about what I said to you , but that is pretty inadequate . I don 't know what set me off , but you didn 't deserve what I said . " " Thank you for that Mark , but I deserved some of it . Don told me some of your history , and I can understand why you were so leery of me . Did girls actually go out with you to get you to introduce them to him ? I can 't believe how much that had to hurt . " " You said that you had survived a war , and I asked Don about it . He told me about some of the things you hinted at from Vietnam . He said that you would never talk about it directly , but what you did say made him very glad that he was not there . " " I try not to say anything about that period of my life . My folks think I need to talk to someone about it though and they are going to get in touch with the Veterans Administration to get me some help . I was a medic flying medevac and we flew into a lot of hot zones . I saw a lot of things I really don 't want to remember . You don 't need to be around someone as unstable as I am . " " I 'll be the one to decide that , not you . You fascinate me and I want to get to know you better . I have never met a man who could make me forget everything like you do . I know that I have been self absorbed and vain , I want you to help me be a better person . " " By not letting me get away with my shit . Every time I start acting like a prom queen , I want you to shut me down . We already know that you aren 't affected by my looks , and I need that . " " Well , to start with , we go on dates . We will take it slow and see just how much we have in common . I think that there will be a lot more than you believe . For right now , do you have enough supplies for me to cook dinner for you ? " " Let 's not put the cart before the horse Robin , if we are together I 'll be glad to meet them . Does this statement by you that we are to date mean that we will be exclusive ? I mean , you won 't be dating anyone else ? " The relief was probably evident in my expression as she giggled . I had not heard her do this before , and I felt it all the way through my being . " It 's not as if I have a lot of other options . I 'll gladly play along until you realize your mistake . " I had some hamburger in the fridge and spaghetti noodles and sauce in the pantry . While I prepared the noodles Robin fried the hamburger , drained it , and added the sauce . She went nuts in my spice cabinet and added several things to the sauce that I didn 't recognize . I surreptitiously stole a taste and was astounded by what she had done to plain basic sauce . She also had me fine chop an onion and toast some bread . She made a garlic butter to spread on the bread and I pulled out a bottle of red wine to go with the meal . A small salad of lettuce , carrots , tomatoes , and celery finished off the dining experience . I was amazed that we worked together so smoothly , everything seemed to be chorused into a whole . |
I have had psychic abilities since I was a child . I am clairvoyant , clairaudient and empathetic . As I continue to harness the gift that runs in my family , I am constantly learning more and more to enhance this gift . Call Me When you are getting a reading , it is important that you are feeling good about yourself . You should not have your emotions all over the place . When I say this , it means , do not be upset , angry , anxious , stressed - out , crying , etc . Emotions play a huge role when you are getting a reading . When you are emotional the outcome of your reading may not be what you want to hear . Something that helps when you are about to get a reading , is to eat a banana an hour before your reading . The potassium in the banana tends to open you up and act as a conduit . * * Please do not take this recommendation if you are allergic to bananas . * * If you play ' trick the psychic ' in your eyes , it may work , but you are the one that does not benefit from this . I was doing a reading for someone and they asked me about their brother . They asked about his truck . I saw that he was going to sell his truck and get another vehicle . This person did not respond to what I had said . Later on , she had written that she tested me , and that I was right about his truck . I will not answer something on demand . For Example : What does he / she look like ? What color is my car ? What about my love life ? There are certain things that will come to me and if it is the look of a person , look of a car , the color of a house , etc . , I will say so . I will ask you to be more specific , if a question is like the above questions or similar . I . E . : What about my love life ? I will most likely ask ; Is there someone in your life already that you would like to look at or , are you looking for new love to come in your life . Being specific with any question is beneficial to you . Being ' CLEAR ' in your heart , mind and soul is the best way of receiving a reading . I work best when I just say what I see . I will usually answer all your questions with this process . Being ' OPEN ' and ' HONEST ' will give you the best benevolent outcome for you in your reading . As the saying goes , " Honesty is the Best policy . " posted How many times did he / she tell you that they would call later ? Or . . that he / she told you that they would see you soon ? How often did they tell you that they would try harder , do better , care more ? How long did you wait ? How long did you hope that it would get better ? Relationships evoke so many questions and incite so much worry and all we want are answers and sometimes there are no answers . Most times , the answer is right in front of our eyes but , we choose to not see it because it is not the answer we want . How often we hope and pray for change with the one we love . They tell us they will call , we wait and nothing happens . They say they care about us , we hope and no call . They say " I will see you tonight . " We get ready , a no show . They say all the right things , but nothing happens . Sound familiar ? Do you constantly find yourself hoping they will call , hoping you will see them , hoping they will change , when in fact all they do is make promises and say so much with so little action . Each time they do this , you lose a piece of you . Pretty soon there is nothing left of you and nothing left of them . You waited . They moved on . You are sad and depressed . They found someone new . Is this right ? Regardless if it is right or wrong . You must stop and watch their words while listening to their actions . If a man says he loves you but never does anything , that is not love . A man will show you he loves you . He will show you through action just how much he really cares about you . A woman will do the same thing . She will show you with action . Action will always speak louder than words . Imagine that the person of interest finally comes around after years of emotional letdown . You finally have them back in your life . You waited all this time . Now what ? Have things changed ? Are you more important to them ? You could go through a lifetime of sadness , letting life pass you by , waiting for them to change . Yes , I realize these words may cause pain . But , what if I am saving you from a lifetime of unhappiness . What if I am giving you your life back ? Do not make excuses or enable the other party not to participate in a healthy relationship . Do not wait by the phone , instead , heal yourself and take back your life that you gave away . Always remember , people change when you change , but that change must come from within . You must be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone . And , if you find yourself in a situation where false promises are made , hopes are raised , and tears fall , just ask yourself , " Why am I doing this to me ? " Then make a choice to be happy and take action to make it happen . As you see , it takes action to make things happen . It takes commitment to make a change . Combine both and you will be able to watch someone 's words by listening to their actions . Often the courage to just speak the truth is hard to muster so promises are made that will never be kept . It 's hurtful , deceitful and unmerciful . And let 's face it , just downright cowardly . It would be so much easier if they just said the words that matched their actions . A lot of time and heartache may have been saved . I always say , " Keep it simple " and " do not give yourself a hard time , " when it comes to anything in life . The simpler , the better I believe . If only more of us employed these two tactics when it came to relationships we would save ourselves a whole lot of time and grief . You not only have to listen to what is being said but pay attention to what is being done . Actions are the real truth . In regard to any relationship , " watch their words and listen to their actions . " If someone is saying it and they are not doing what they say , you have your answer . Simple , the proof is in the pudding . I do believe God , the Universe , ( whatever you want to call your higher power ) works in mysterious ways . I was at work doing in person readings the day Cyndall emailed me her blog . I had a client that came in for a reading . I was looking at her relationship with this man and I was not getting the greatest feelings coming from this man , it was all negative . All I kept seeing was that he treated her badly and that he had some serious issues when it came to being with a woman , or just being in a relationship . My client blurted out , he 's emotionally raping me . I looked at her and said , you know that is a good way to explain it , I have never heard of that before . When I came home that day from work , there was this email from Cyndall . I do believe there is a reason for this . So , below you will see Cyndall 's input in a larger indented Font and my input in a smaller Font . Recently I was talking to a client who had finally broken off her dysfunctional relationship . She has been out of major contact with her ex for approximately 26 days . She kept saying how good life looked to her now , how she could see possibilities for herself now that she had not seen before . Her thinking was different and her emotions were stable . " How the heck did I let this happen to me ? " she asked . I asked got quiet and heard " She was emotionally raped " . WHAT ? ? In shock I repeated this to her and she got quiet and after a moment said " Not only was I emotionally raped , I also had the Stockholm Syndrome " . Wow . Unlike a physical rape , emotional rape can take months . Emotional rape is the using of someone 's emotions without their consent because of a hidden agenda . The ' rapist ' usually starts out being charming and very attentive . He cannot do enough for his intended victim . He shows so much appreciation and tells her how wonderful , how understanding , how beautiful she is . The ' victim ' feels secure , loved and appreciated in ways she has never been before . In my client 's case , the man was very attentive . He would show up at her house , bring her coffee , and do whatever needed to be done around her house . He would show up at the gym she would workout at . She saw this as being sweet , how nice of him . Then things start to change . He becomes less attentive , acting distracted and distant . The ' victim ' makes excuses for this . " He is going through a lot at work " . He apologizes and she feels her first touch of fear , she could lose this amazing relationship . He mentions somewhat wistfully that he loves blonde hair ; she runs out and gets her hair streaked . She only wants to please him . After all he has been wonderful . This starts so simply , so subtly , so insidiously , that looking back it is hard to see where it started . Eventually nothing about her makes him happy , long term . She works too much , she dresses inappropriately , she is too fat , and her boobs are too small . She starts feeling there has to be something wrong with her . Just one more thing she can do to make him happy , make him see how good she is for him and to him . And ever so often he will shamefacedly admit it ( that she is wonderful ) and she feels justified in her behavior . She is doing so much for him that her friends have all just disappeared . She does not have time for them because he may need her and be hurt by her choosing her friends over him , even though he does that himself , choosing his friends over her but discouraging her to go out with her own friends . " They don 't like me " . She knows this to be true , none of her friends approve of him or the way she has changed since meeting him . After a year , things started changing . When they were with mutual friends he started subtly saying things to indicate she was stalking him . She would show up where they all would hang out and he would be there , but would act friendly , not at all like the man who was her lover at her home . He started to say things to her , that she did not have friends , that her hair did not look good , etc . ( This client is in her 40 's and whThe Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a captive cannot escape ( or does not want to escape ) and is isolated ( all her friends are gone ) and threatened with death , ( death of the relationship ) but is shown token acts of kindness by the captor . Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified , since finding perspective in this situation is by impossible . It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold . He kept telling the mutual friends they would hang around with that it was her , that he wasn 't going out with her and that she was showing up to chase him . He would tell the friends that he was not interested in her , but at the same time he was coming to her house to see her , calling her and telling her a different story . At one point , I did tell her to change the times she went to the gym , to change her cell phone number and to try and move and not go to where the mutual friends hung out . Even her friends believed this man . She felt so alone , there was no one to talk to . She did finally leave the situation . She knew it was not a good relationship and finally broke away from it . It was difficult because the man he seemed to be when they were alone was the man she loved . She is a stronger woman now than she was before meeting this man . A strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive ( keeping the relationship alive ) becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the captor which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your captor . She no longer blames him ; she blames herself for not doing that one extra thing to make him happy . For talking when she should have kept quiet . For demanding attention when she should have seen he was in a bad mood . She starts feeling worthless . She is like a thermometer , always gauging his moods . She is only worthy when he is happy . If only she could see what would make him happy today , more sex , wilder sex , Chinese food , new DVD 's , a backrub ? Often the ' captor ' will break up with the ' victim ' and after making her suffer for a time , allows her back into his life but she is constantly on probation and can be kicked out on a whim . This is not a relationship . If you should find yourself involved in this type of relationship , however mild it may seem . If having that other person becomes more important to you than anything else , your dignity , your honor , your integrity , your job , your sense of family , your sense of self , you need professional help . My client got professional help and she is so happy to have herself back . I am too ; I missed her when she was ' away ' . posted I was sound asleep and woke up with the feeling of someone staring at me . When I opened my eyes and looked up , there was a man standing beside my bed looking down at me . I pinched myself hard to make sure I was really awake . It hurt , it was not a dream . I then realized with some type of message that was coming from this man that it was my grandfather who had passed in 1969 . There was this automatic feeling , don 't be afraid and I wasn 't anymore . I laid there in bed and just stared up at my grandfather with my eyes wide open . When I blinked , he was gone . I looked at the clock and it was around 3 : 30 am . When I had told my Aunt Marlene this . She said , " Oh yeah , what was he wearing ? " I told her , " Brown tweed pants and a brown tweed vest with a shirt . " She said , " That 's funny that you say that . When we were kids we were so poor . One day my father came home with a brown and blue tweed vest . My mother screamed at him , we don 't have money for that and you are buying clothes . He felt so guilty and never wore them . It 's good to know that he is wearing it now . " Last May I had a dream of my brother , grandmother and grandfather . In the dream my grandfather was standing at the front door of the house I grew up in . He was waving to my grandmother and brother as they drove off to pick up my aunt Marcella . When I woke up I found this dream puzzling , because my brother , grandmother and grandfather are all passed . My aunt Marcella is not . I telephoned my aunt Marlene to let her know about this dream . She told me that Marcella had been in and out of the hospital with some health issues and problems with her heart . I am not sure what the meaning of that dream was . The only thing that I can come up with is , it was not Marcella 's time to go home . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * posted The following is an insert from a book I read : A Still , Small Voice . A Psychic 's Guide to Awakening Intuition by , Echo Bodine . When I read this part of the book , I felt that I could relate to it and that it fits the mold of a lot of people I have come across in the course of my life . Ø Years ago , after the breakup of a relationship , my therapist said , " Look what 's happened to you - - - - you 've completely lost yourself . " I was so far gone emotionally that I had no idea what she was talking about . She went on to explain that when we 're being true to ourselves , we hear the guidance from our intuition and live our lives accordingly , but when we give our power to another person , we stop listening to our intuition . We look to the other person to direct and guide us , and after a while we forget who we are . Unfortunately , a lot of us allow this to happen because of our deep need to be loved and our fear of loneliness . Ø The man I had been involved with was a very controlling person who never honored the wisdom of intuition . He would tell me to " get real , " and say that the way I was trying to live was stupid and foolish . In every situation , he 'd tell me what to do , what to wear , where I could and couldn 't go , what he wanted my career to be , what to say to his friends and his family , and how to act . If I seemed the least bit ungrateful , he would pull his " look at all I 've done for you " routine , and I would be shamed back into my dependence on him . We were quite the pair . He was king controller and I was queen co - dependent . There was a part of me that resisted constantly , and another part of me that didn 't think I could survive without him . I felt constantly torn between listening to my inner wisdom and listening to this man I was so addicted to . Ø Breaking away from this relationship took many years but it was worth every painful step . As I said earlier , we can 't be true to our inner voice and to the voices of the world at the same time . That never works when we 're walking the spiritual path . Ø When I had read this part of the book . I thought back to the time I was in a relationship with this guy , which I thought I was so ' in love ' with . I did everything for him and he did nothing for me . This hit home for me many , many years ago . That was the time in my life that I was not using my abilities . I have learned so much from that experience that I call it a blessing . " IF A MAN WANTS YOU " Note : ( File this away and pull it out when you need a reminder ! ) If a man wants you , nothing can keep him away . If he doesn 't want you , nothing can make him stay . Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior . Allow your intuition ( or spirit ) to save you from heartache . Stop trying to change yourselves for a relationship that 's not meant to be . Slower is better . Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy . If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no , you can 't " be friends . " A friend wouldn 't mistreat a friend . Don 't settle . If you feel like he is stringing you along , then he probably is . Don 't stay because you think " it will get better . " You 'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better . The only person you can control in a relationship is you . Avoid men who 've got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women . He didn 't marry them when he got them pregnant , Why would he treat you any differently ? Always have your own set of friends separate from his . Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you . If something bothers you , SPEAK UP . Never let a man know everything . He will use it against you later . You cannot change a man 's behavior . Change comes from within . Don 't EVER make him feel he is more important than you are . . . even if he has more education or in a better job . Do not make him into a quasi - god . He is a man , nothing more nothing less . Never let a man define who you are . Never borrow someone else 's man . Oh Lord ! If he cheated with you , he 'll cheat on you . A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you . All men are NOT dogs . You should not be the one doing all the bending . . . compromise is a two - way street . You need time to heal between relationships . . . there is nothing cute about baggage . . . deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship . You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you . . . a relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals . . . look for someone complimentFri , Jan 1 , 2016 10 : 05 AM by DZigns 0 Comments I am a medium and have had psychic abilities since I was a child . I am a mother of five gifted children . I do believe that all of my children possess the gift of psychic abilities in different forms . In addition to my five children I have a 3 granddaughters and a grandson . I believe that they are all gifted as well . I do believe that some of my grandkids are Crystal Childen . You can read more on Crystal Children at : http : / / www . thecrystalchildren . com / . When I was very young ( under age 10 ) , I would see a man in the ceiling of my bedroom when I went to bed . I had no idea who he was or why I would talk to him . I wondered if he was God , a judge , he seemed and looked like someone of authority . I now think he was my spirit guide , sent from God to direct me , and is present in my life today As a teen , my abilities sharpened . I had no idea what to call this . It usually just seemed like strange coincidences . These " coincidences " was my early ' wake - up ' call from spirit . As I look back , I am aware that psychic ability was common in my family . We took our abilities for granted without associating them with being ' psychic ' . It was a normal , daily , occurrence . My sister always knew who was calling and would run to get the telephone if it was for her , if it was for me or another member of the house , she would not bother to answer , she already knew who the call was for . It was not until my sister started pursuing tarot card readings and using her psychic abilities that I looked into mine years later . During the time that my sister went into her pursuit , I was actively going to church , learning about God . I believe that was what was needed during that time in my life . I also believe that I am reading now because it is to help people . Looking back , I do see that I have helped people spiritually , emotionally / mentally and physically . In 1975 , a few months after dating a boy named Mark , my girlfriend asked me , " How are his parents ? " I replied to her , " His mother is very nice and I think his father is a child molester , I think he likes little girls . " When I had said this to my girlfriend , she just chalked it off as , oh , that 's Denise , and she says these things and paid no mind to it . In November of 2005 , my girlfriend had driven by the house of that boy I dated way back when . She just so happened to ask me , " By the way , how are Mark 's parents ? " I said to her , " They are divorced and the mother remarried and the father was a child molester . " She in response said , " You said that , but , I thought you were kidding . When did this come out ? " It came out around 1990 , fifteen years after the fact . In 1976 my date took me to a party at the home of Samuel Goldstein . My date knew Samuel and when I was introduced to him , I got a very bad creepy feeling . I tried to tell my date how I felt about him , and said " I see this man being a mass murderer , killing a bunch of people . " My date said " Are you crazy ? " " Why would you say something like that ? " All I could say was " Samuel gives me the creeps and I can see him killing a lot of people ? " Twenty - five years later Samuel Goldstein 's face was plastered on the front page of a local newspaper . The headline read " Mass Murder Killing Spree " . I was not shocked but instead wondered why it took so long for him to be caught . He is now on death row . The death penalty was not in effect , but , because of the brutality of his crimes it has been re - instated . In 1976 I saw a girl I knew from school , hitchhiking . I picked her up and felt compelled to tell her she should not be thumbing and that she would get in a car with the wrong person . She said " Oh , I am OK , I do this all the time . " She insisted she would be fine . A few weeks later a friend at school told me she was missing , after a week her body was found in a bog . To this day , I feel Samuel Goldstein had something to do with her disappearance and her murder has never been solved . In March of 1977 I was at a restaurant . The temperature was still frigid . I ran into Larry , a guy I went to school with . We were chatting when he mentioned he could not wait until summer . I asked " Why " ? Larry said " I cannot wait to ride my motorcycle to the beach with my inner tube around my waist " . " When I heard him say that , I said , " Now , why would you do something like that ? You will get killed doing that . All I see is the wind pulling you up off the bike and you go flying and smack the ground and get killed instantly . " He got very upset and started yelling that I was crazy . He said he did this all the time . In August I was at the beach with my girlfriend . She said to me , Larry died this weekend . " What happened ? " I asked . " He was driving his motorcycle to the beach with an inner tube around his waist and the wind blew him up off the bike and he flew onto the street and it killed him instantly " . My mouth dropped . The next incident , I am not really sure what year it was ; it could have been June of 1977 or 1978 . I remember I was at a set of lights in my hometown with my girlfriend . I was the first one at the lights when a motorcycle with William Martin pulled up right next to me . I turned to my girlfriend in the passenger seat and said , " He will be dead by the end of the summer . " Then I just drove away . Two months later , in August , William Martin had died on his motorcycle . My girlfriend that was in the car that day said , " You said that he would die . " One day my friend Sara and her sister , Gail , came to my house . Sara asked me to do a reading for Gail . We sat in my living room and started the reading . The first thing I got was that I saw Gail in a courtroom and she was crying . I asked her if she had a court date coming up and she said no . I told her I felt it could be around her son , she would be there with two men and she would be crying . The reading was done and we were baffled . The following Friday , my girlfriend Sara calls to tell me that her sister Gail was in court all morning . Two police officers one on each side of her son were escorting him into the court room and Gail was crying . When Sara told me that her son had been arrested for stealing a car , I in turn said , " Well , don 't you remember when you told me that he was breaking into cars last summer and stealing the stereos out of them ? " My girlfriend got mad at me and said , " I never had that conversation with you . I never told you that . " I was insistent , I told her that it was clear as day that we had that conversation . Two days later , on Sunday my girlfriend calls me again and tells me , " You 're not going to believe this . My mother was over Gail 's house today and Gail 's husband said to my mother , " I knew he ( the son ) would do something like this especially when he was breaking into cars last summer and stealing the stereos out of them . " Sara said to me , when my mother told me this , I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone . I said to Sara , " See , I told you , you told me that . " A woman called and asked me , " What does so and so think of me ? " I heard the song , " You light up my life " by Debbie Boone in my head . I said to the woman , I 'm hearing this song and she cracked up laughing and said , " Oh my God , he sang that song to me at a restaurant ! " * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I have done readings using crystal balls and what I see is so interesting . I remember reading a lady ; I saw a box filled with tissue papers and canolis . When I saw this , it really puzzled me . A lot of times what doesn 't make sense to me , makes perfect sense to the person I am reading . So , I said , " I see a box of canolis " . When I said this the woman said , " Oh my God , I was thinking about canolis on the way here and NOW I have to get some ! ! " I remember the time when a roommate of mine wanted to get this certain doll for her daughter at Christmas . She was panicking because this doll was popular and was not to be found in any store . I said to her , I don 't know why , but you are going to find this doll . She just laughed at me and went out . When she returned home later that night , she was all excited . She had been driving down a street and saw a brown paper bag in the middle of the road . She pulled over to pick up the bag and when she opened it , there was the doll she wanted for her daughter . There was this woman who had quit her job . She asked me where she would get her next job . I saw that it would be near water , so I said Boston . She said to me , " I just quit my job in Boston and I am not going back there . I could not stand the commute . " She thought , I was nuts . The next time I saw her she said to me . Well , you told me I would get a job in Boston near water and I did . I work in Boston on Water Street . There have been a lot of times when I would drive by a home and wonder what the home looks like on the inside or even want to live in the home . This seems to happen to me quite a bit . I said to my girlfriend , " I would love to live there . " Well , I am living in that house now . There was this time when my girlfriend 's daughter was at my house and I said to her , watch out for white vans , I feel that they are up to no good . She looked at me puzzled and said to me , " Okay . " The next time I saw her , she said to me , " Did you see the news ? They were talking about white vans and how they may have something to do with September 11th and that they could be holding gas cans . " This same girl one time asked me to go to Canada with her and her family to do a memorial service for her uncle . When she asked me to go , I said , " No , you are going to get into trouble . " She said to me , " What do you mean ? " I had no idea what it was , but , felt that it would not be dangerous , just felt some kind of trouble . When she got to the border they ended up taking the men from the vehicles and checking them out to find that one of them had some type of warrant and that they had to hold them over night . It was a mix - up and they were released the next day . My daughter had her girlfriend over my house a few years back . When she was sitting in my dining room , I looked at my daughter 's friend and said , " You are going to have a baby girl and you are going to name her Rose after your grandmother . " When I said this to her , she immediately said , " No , I 'm not . " After she had left with my daughter , she said to my daughter , " Is your mother a freak ? How did she know that ? " My husband and I were just talking about that , but , now I 'm not going to do that . She did have a girl , but , did not name her Rose . About two weeks ago , my daughter and I were driving . My daughter said , " I need to give Sue a call . " I said to her , " Yes , you do , she 's pregnant . " A few days later , Sue emailed my daughter and said , " Guess what ? " My daughter emailed her saying , " You 're pregnant . " Of course , Sue wrote back , how did you know that ? My daughter said , " My mother told me . " I had been looking at a photograph of a friend that I had been reading for about six years at the time . When I was looking at her , I saw her sitting in a wheelchair . Of course , this was very upsetting to me , how would I tell her this ? I telephoned my girlfriend and said , " I don 't know how to say this , but , I see you in a wheelchair . " Although my girlfriend was not too happy to hear that from me , she knew that I loved her and cared about her , but at the same time was upset and worried . I did not know why I saw her like that or what would be the cause of her being in a wheelchair . A year later , my girlfriend telephoned me to tell me that she broke her leg and that she could only be in a wheelchair to get around . She was worried that the wheelchair could have been a lifetime situation . Thank God it wasn 't . As a psychic I wish I could see only good , happy things for my clients , but that is not so , life is not like that . Which you have read in the above stories . posted |
Today was a gray and windy day . There were large storms all around us , although we got scarcely any rain . Still , the thunder fretted in the distance . The great masses of gray billowing clouds moving in varying thicknesses across the sun made the world dark , and then bright , and then strangely , a combination of both light and dark . Since beginning my ' Wild Blue Yonder ' , I 've developed an eye for wildflowers . I see them in a way that I never saw them before . Surely they were never so bright as they are this year ? I certainly could not have missed that . The killdeer eggs have hatched , and mama has absconded to the fields with them . I never even got to see them , let alone take a picture . I ate my lunch in an old cemetary today , reading epitaphs , trying to imagine what it was like to live , and to die before the Civil War . What was it like to lose three of your children before they were grown ? I walked around imagining stories to go with the tombstones . I drove past a farm today and saw a group of wild turkey scratching the ground side by side with the chickens . It made me laugh out loud . When I stopped by to speak with the Amish , I was glad to see the children come running , a bunch of them , bare feet flying as hands held their hats on their heads . Not just the ones I 'd been dealing with , but the whole neighborhood . We talked about mosquitoes , and I gave them ice cream and ice cold orange sodas . It was a day of mental snapshots , each image captured in my mind 's eye , soul satisfying , perfectly centered , focused , clear and rich in details . I 'm the luckiest person that I know . The wedding was in the woods . The bride was barefoot . The groom wore blue jeans . ( So did practically everyone else . ) Each place at the picnic table had a real horse shoe decorated with flowers and tulle bags of candy . We toasted hotdogs . There were sloppy joes and salads and beans , all manner of casual outdoor dining . The wedding cake was cute . The flower girl abdicated her flower girl duties , but looked darling , patiently squatting and placing an orange salamander on her head over and over . There were buggy rides . I got to hold babies , even the newest Abby Joy . There were swings and visiting . It was nice , this wedding in the woods . I hope they enjoy the raspberry bushes we bought them as a wedding present . I hope that they stay as happy as they looked this day . Life 's happening here . Looks like the times , they are a - changing . I don 't know for sure what is going to happen , and it just seems unfair that you should know before I do , so you 'll just have to wait . Today I was driving , thinking about things . I have been feeling increasingly ' led ' . Tim is convinced of the direction that I should go . He 's prayed about it and he believes that he has his answer . I prayed about it too , but I am more cautious about thinking that I know what to do next . I realized that the problem is that I have some pretty crappy self esteem . Really . Setting out on this new path would required me to believe in myself . I suck at believing in myself . " I want to be a biology teacher . " ( You 've always thought you were better than anyone else . ) I 'm not going to make a career out of the Army . Can I live at home while I look for a place to live ? I have a job . ( Go ahead , come on home , be a loser . ) When my marriage fell apart , the response was ' You made your bed , now you can lie in it . ' It doesn 't matter what has happened , if I am anywhere around , it will be my fault . I heard my mother say , once , crying , " I feel like a big zero . " I get that . Totally . I don 't fit in my family . I 'm a zero too . Family dynamics are a strange thing . I 've walked away from the anger and the fighting and the accusations . I will never have a valid point of view . My opinion will never matter . It is what it is . While I am content with my choices , while I 'm at peace with my life , the fact remains , my self - esteem sucks . I have good and supportive friends and relatives and readers and all of it . Today I was trying to come to grips with this decision , praying about it , weighing things , and the inner dialogue went something like " Just who do you think you are ? ! ! ! " The voice varied between my parents , or my ex or the bosses at my last job , but over and over , as I pondered things , I kept hearing it . " Who in the hell do you think you are ? " I spent the whole day trying to get comfortable with what come next , to figure out what to do next , to step ouPosted by The killdeer eggs have still not hatched . I 've been watching closely , because I want to get pictures of the babies . Oh . They are the most darling little puffballs darting about . Each time I go to the barns where I store my equipment , the mama killdeer puts on a dramatic display . She flaps around wildly , screaming ' Keeeeekeeeeeeeekeeeeeeekeeeee ! ' . The display is meant to say , " I 'm wounded , easy prey , far more worth your while than that nest of eggs . . . " taking her ( and the predator ) further and further from her nest . When she has led the predator far enough from the nest , she simply flies up into the air and circles about until it is safe to come back . This particular bird has become so used to me checking out that nest that she has begun to nervously ( but quietly ) watch me , forgoing the display . FogCarl SandburgThe fog comes on little cat feet . It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on . * * * * * * * * From the harbor and the city , the fog moved on , and visited here tonight . The approach was magical to watch . Just down the road , we saw a bear . He paused briefly , and then turned and padded quickly away into the dark and foggy woods . The back deck is arranged . The lightning bugs are out . Cara helped me plant some planters . It was a quiet end to a day filled with serendipity . We shopped at Goodwill . Her latest passion is old leather suitcases from the thirties and forties . We found a magnificent one for $ 3 . 99 . It even still had the key . There have a wonderful 29 cent sale going on . I found three pairs of capris , one pair of khaki levis , a silk pantsuit , and four tank tops . Cara got a beautiful midnight blue short party dress , three shirts , and a pair of leather clogs that I wanted desperately but they were too small for me , a perfect fit for Cara . She also found a pair of stylish but practical shoes that she can wear to work . The clothing was all 29 cent each . I also found a glass bottle with the wire and ceramic stopper perfect for making blueberry vinegar . It was great fun , such a nice day . At the end of it , I heard the best thing that a parent can hear . My daughter , the adventurer , said , " There 's just something about coming home . " May it always be so . The other day , I was out , minding my own business , when I heard a ' pssst ! Over here ! ! ! ! ' I 'd never heard of Equine On - Line Dating Service . Hey . . . My name 's Winnie , and I am hot to trot . I like walking in the rain , and sugar cubes . Am anxious to connect with the studs at Granite Glen . Posted by I think that I 'm on the downhill slide of all this drug stuff . Finally . I have gotten to the point that more of my night passes while I 'm alseep than when I am wide awake wondering what made me dream that . I came to a conclusion about those dreams . They were simply very literal manifestations of my thoughts and fears . Take the statement : " I love asparagus " , which is true . It played out literally in my dreams . There were dreams about huge black birds , and about being lost , and small bite - y dogs . I should have written them down . They 've just just sort of receded into the dark recesses of what appears to be , anyway , a darker mind than I knew I ever had . So now I 'm sleeping again , and sleeping soundly , waking up in the morning craving more sleep . I usually wake up at least once a night so parched I have to get up and drink a bottle of water , but things are getting back to normal , and for that I am everlastingly grateful . Cara is home for the weekend . She actually got home Thursday night but met a friend for coffee before she bothered pulling in this driveway . ( Ouch . ) She called me about 2 : 30 in the afternoon . " Mom , " she said , " Will you make pizza for us tonight ? Can the gang stay over ? " " Well , " I said , " I have to run over and see Mary and Danny tonight . " They had just gotten home from their trip out west . They had gone to see the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert , Sequoia National Park , Las Vegas , bunch of places . Armed with their new digital camera and a rental car , they had two weeks of adventuring recorded . I wanted to see the pictures and hear their stories . Mary was also recuperating from the day 's adventures in radiotherapy and I wanted to see how she was doing . Cara listened to this and then said , " Wait . You made plans when you knew that I was coming home for the weekend ? " Me : " Well , yeah . I figured that you would be out running with James , Johnna , Sarah , and Tommy . " Cara : " Well , yeah , but . . . " " Cara , " I said , " I 've got a life ! " So I went home from work , showered , made two pizzas ( cheated , used premade crusts ) , Posted by It is no secret , if you have read this blog long , that I love thunder and lightning storms . I do . I like the wind , and the grumbling thunder that gets louder and louder , until with a flash of temper unleashed , the storm hits . I like to watch the storms approach . I like to smell the ozone . The best storms are the ones that come in from more than one direction . The thunder rolls across one end of the sky to the other . I love that sensation of being in the middle of something way larger than myself . We have a storm moving in right now , and I 'm waiting . Never does a storm move in without Jethro Tull playing in the back of my mind . They 're one of my favorites too . We 've lost the power once already while I was typing this and listening to the thunder , so I will close and shut down the computer . This is one of my favorite trees . It 's a weeping willow , and the thing is huge . It would probably take at least 4 or 5 people holding hands to span the trunk . I cannot imagine how old this thing is . The bark is fascinating . I took a picture today , because as I was wreaking havoc on the local mosquito population , the owner mentioned that they were going to cut the tree down . It 's so old and rotten that it is ' an disaster waiting to happen ' . This is not my favorite tree , but I drove past that , and never thought to take a picture . I 've got some Amish kids enlisted in the war on mosquitoes . It will be an ongoing educational project , but a very good opportunity to work with a part of the county 's population that I had previously not reached . When their mothers were giving them permission to go on a walk with me , the discussion took place in machine gun rapid German . We set out to look for larva . I explained what they would be looking for . The kids were so quiet that I began to wonder how well they spoke English . " You know , " I said , " If you 're working for me , it only seems fair that we work some sort of a payment out . Perhaps we could barter . Do you all like popsicles ? " Eyebrows went up and they looked back and forth at each other grinning . Yeah . Their English ? As good as their German , I think . I 'm not sure where the idea came for popsicles and ice cream bars , etc . , but it was pretty darn good . I realized later , since they don 't have electric ( no freezers ) , things like popsicles and ice cream treats are probably not a common occurance . So I 've got my own little squad of ' skeeter beaters ' . They will locate larva , I will treat . I walked and walked today , miles and miles . I found some wonderful white flowers ( haven 't looked them up yet , so can 't tell you what they are ) . I wanted them for ' Wild Blue Yonder ' . Unfortunately this flower ( which looks like baby 's breath , and grows in clumps ) is , as I said , white . Last night , as I was not sleeping , I kept thinking of those flowers . They were so gorgeous . Suddenly it came to me : WiPosted by Our computer is old , and although we have DSL , it still is frustratingly slow . We got it from Walmart back when Dylan was a junior in high school , braving crowds at the Walmart on ' black Friday ' . There was an awesome sale , and we were trying to replace a ten year old computer . Doing the math , this makes our current computer nearly seven years old . Now since our family tends to keep everything until it falls apart ( Tim 's car has 173K miles on it , mine not a lot less ) , I expected to be grumbling at my computer for a few more years yet . It 's just our way . Saturday , we went baby Brady 's christening . When we got home , I downloaded the pictures from the camera to the computer to send them to all of the kids . It took me 14 minutes to get the pictures to download . It took me another quarter of an hour to attach them to the e - mail , and then I clicked ' send ' and sat down to watch a movie with Tim . Somewhere between the beginning and the end of the movie , it sent . I knew it would take a while . Tim began talking about the television . Since the switchover to digital , we don 't get anything but PBS . This was news to me . I only watch TV on Saturday night , and that is when we watch our PBS line up , so I hadn 't noticed . We have the converter box , because our TV is old . Tim was wondering whether we should invest in a new aerial . Maybe just get a new TV . We discussed cable , and satellite , but in the end , decided that really , neither of us watch enough TV to warrant spending the money . That kind of surprised me . We watched TV when the kids were home , but now , I guess we 're just too busy with other stuff to think about it . I made the statement that if we were going to spend money on something , I 'd rather have a new computer . Tim ruefully agreed . I came home tonight , and guess what ? We have a new computer ! It 's a Dell , an All in One . Flat screen monitor . Really , the amazing thing is that there is so little to it . I looked at our old one , with the tower , with the printer and the speakers and the mouse , and wires every where . I looked at thPosted by Today was a nice day . I got a lot of housework done , baked a shepherd 's pie for lunch , and talked to a friend from Michigan . His wife died recently , and I was worried about him . Out of the blue , I received a card from him , and a picture he had taken of yellow ladyslippers ( we 've only seen pink before . Reading his letter , he 's had a very rough time of it , but , like me , he 's discovered the healing peace of long periods spent tramping about the woods with your eyes wide open . I immediately called him on the phone and spent a pleasant hour visiting while continuing to clean . ( Remember the ' olden days ' when you had to stay in one place to talk to the phone ? ) We went to Johnsonburg this afternoon . Tim 's brother waited a long time to marry , but he found a wonderful woman and got married when he was forty . Today , I watched little Brady get baptized , a strapping boy with big feet and big hands . Dawn looks tired ( but far better than the last time we saw her ) , but she has a glow about her . I gave her a hug and told her the same thing that I had told Norm the night before : Dawn looks like a woman who 's had every dream she 's ever had come true . She still looks that way . Norm held the baby so carefully , and I loved that he could not stop looking at him . By the end of it all , I decided that Norm also looked like a man who 's had every dream he ever had come true . A new family . I was teary eyed with happiness for all of us . Leaving that ceremony , I saw , one street over , a bride and groom posing for pictures on the front steps of one of the historic buildings . They looked pretty happy too . Two different ceremonies , two rites of passages , life changes . Unaccountably , I found myself getting teary eyed all over again . Life really is beautiful , isn 't it ? Today 's symptom seems to be pain in the hands and feet . I got carsick in the one hour ride to Johnsonburg and got carsick on the one hour ride back . I am starting to think that I will never sleep again . I am exhausted , actually sick with it , but it is 2 : 18 . I have not yet fallen asleep . Posted by Sorry for the frustration yesterday . I 'm rather shocked by all of this . But , I 'm over a week into it , only took it for , eh , maybe 3 or 4 months , so I can 't believe that I am NOT over the worst of things . So let 's do a survey of the bright spots to all of this . Hm . Well . When the visual disturbances began , and this sort of giant shiver thing that ran up my spine and ' exploded ' at the base of my skull with a dull roar that blocked all other sounds for a few seconds , I seriously found myself wondering ' What the hell ? ! ! ! Is this a sign of brain cancer or something ? ' So figuring out that it was not cancer metasticizing was a relief . * stands thinking * The teeth chattering chills were a wonderful break from the hot flashes . . . * thinks some more * It provided quite a bit of entertainment trying to figure out why I would have dreamt such a thing as that for Pete 's sake . . . ( or , yeah , I do love asparagus , but I usually eat it ) * ponders * Yeah . Okay . That 's all I got . No joking around . This past couple weeks has not been a really fun time . I have been so exhausted and sick . At first , I thought that I was coming down with the flu . I even missed a day of work . Today , I was so sick that moving my head made me nauseous . I headed out to do some treatment and surveillance at some of my hot spots , but quickly realized that I was not safe to be driving my truck . I returned to the office and did paperwork . I also began to do some serious reading on this drug and withdrawal . One person 's account : " I stopped taking the drug for 4 days . For the first couple of days I seemed to feel fine . . . just very , very tired due to heavy dreams and the inability to sleep well at all . Once the 3rd and 4th day hit . . . . it has been awful . I am moody , I feel light - headed , my head feels ' clogged ' , as though I have ' medicine head ' , I am very nausous and emotional . My heart feels like it is going to pound through my chest . I feel so , so icky . " Another : " Day One and Two off medication : Brain zaps ( you could swear you hear your eyeballs moving ! ) , very dry mouth , a bit hyper ( more talkative than usual ) , more sensitive to heatDays Three and Four : Brain zaps still there but not quite as intense , mild headache , face feeling flushed , sweating more than usual ( during exercise ) , general flu like symptoms ( muscle aches , sore throat ) Days Five and Six : Still having brain zaps , mild headache , itchy , clogged head feeling , slight dizziness , just general yucky feeling . " How about : " As far as the symptoms you are talking about , these are mine when experiencing the withdrawal : - sick stomach - dizzy / vertigo - can 't concentrate or form clear thoughts - speech comes out wrong due to the lack of clear thoughts - hyper periods - heavy head - extremely emotional , go from sad to angry very fast with really no reasons - brain shocks , these are the worst along with being dizzy , its like an electric spark runs up my spine and bursts right at the top of my neck when it hits the brain - hearing things , can 't really explain what I hear , almost like I can hear Posted by Still dragging tired , but life goes on . Last night , I picked up Mary and we went to my sister 's house for supper . I brought the end of last summer 's strawberries from the freezer . We had strawberry shortcake for dessert . We all sat at the table exchanging stories . Although Mary is a new friend for me , she and my sister were dear friends during high school . My sister 's sister - in - law , Linda , joined us . Supper was excellent . My sister , Anna , made the main course , swiss steak . Linda made some excellent bread . Mary made the salad , and it was a good one . We lingered over good food and the stories came one right after another , and the laughter was nonstop . It has been a long time since I have laughed that long and that heartily . It was a joy . And when we left , at the ungodly hour ( for me , anyhow ) of 10 PM , I saw for the first time that the fireflies were out . I 've been so exhausted that I haven 't been outside after dark for , gosh , I don 't know how long . When I finish work tonight , I 've got a plan . Our robins have left the nest last week . I can finally pull the deck furniture out and set up the back porch . And when I am done , I am going to take a while to sit on the porch swing and watch the fireflies . Firefly season doesn 't last long here . A month , maybe six weeks . I missed the young robins ' first flight , but I 'm not going to miss fireflies . I 'm not much of a pill person . Really . I believe that I 'm doing remarkably well to be remembering my 5 each morning . But one of the pills did not seem to be controlling the symptoms that it was supposed to control . I started reading up on this drug and was surprised to find that it was quite a powerful drug with an assortment of side effects , some of which were already troubling me . It occurred to me that really , taking this drug was like swatting mosquitoes with a baseball bat , and so I quit taking the drug . Cold turkey . I suppose that I really hadn 't ought to have done that . I cannot say whether or not my impulsive decision had anything to do with the events of the next few days . After struggling to get through my work day for most of last week , I had my powerhouse Saturday , and then I was flat on my back sick for the next two and a half days , sleeping 10 and 12 hours at a time , getting up for two and falling back to sleep for several more hours . Strange dreams , and nightmares too . Nausea , and sweating and chills . I 've still got no appetite , although I can drink water by the quart . It seems to be on the downhill side now , and I went back to work this morning . What a few days that was , and let me tell you , there is nothing going to get me to take another one of those pills . Ever . Mind you , I 've no idea if they actually were at the root of all of this , but , by golly , my mind is made up , so don 't be confusing me with facts . Today I worked nine hours and came home , got our truck and headed out to shovel a truckload of compost . I drove it back home and then shoveled it off again . I 'm sweaty and tired , and have just polished off another quart of water . I 'll take a long hot shower and then I expect to sleep soundly tonight , untroubled by nightmares . After feeling like crap for most of the week , I finally ' snapped out of it ' . Still don 't know what was up , but I was so exhausted that it was all I could do to get myself home after a day at work . After falling into bed and sleeping for ten hours straight , I finally woke up with energy . Today I painted . Then I came home and I mowed our mega lawn . I weeded one of my gardens , mulched it . My sister mentioned that she 'd love some yellow iris . I have very pale yellow ones , bright yellow ones , yellow ones with brown , yellow with cream . I decided that I 'd better dig them up while they still had flowers on them , and I could tell them apart . I 'm sort of a slap dash flower person . I throw everything everywhere , and never remember what is where , so every year is a big surprise for me . As long as I was digging , I also dug up a batch of my deep purple ones with lavender , and a burgundy colored one with cream . I had quite a carload of iris for her . I planted some shrubs . I also began my new garden . I 've dubbed it ' Wild Blue Yonder ' . It 's a patch of wildflowers , all blue , that I collect as I tramp around the county after mosquitoes . The day ended before I ran out of steam . That was a wonderful change . I took part in a ' Relay for Life ' as a walker , back the year that my father died , as a way to honor him . I remember walking and thinking about him . How strange it was this year to be part of the opening ceremonies , to hear my own name read , to walk the ' survivor lap ' . It still seems a bit unreal . Yesterday 's news bothered me something awful . After 88 years on this earth , the man was still so full of hatred . How can that be ? What does God do with people like that ? How can there be freaks out there applauding this action ? Today , as I worked , I fretted about this , about hatred in general , about anger , and the sorry state of this world . As I worked in a swamp , the wind rustled the cattails . " sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhh . . . " was the sound , as if God had whispered to the wind , who passed it on to the cattails , who shared the word with me . And so I shushed . Right there in the middle of the swamp , I was still , and I knew that He was God . It 's probably stupid to have favorite trees , but I do . Most of them are old and gnarled and huge . This one appears to have been struck by lightning at some point . It 's a great big tree though . Wouldn 't these branches be neat to climb into ? This is not my favorite tree . My favorite tree appears to be dying . I 'll have to get a picture of it the next time I 'm in the area . It 's my favorite tree because I distinctly remember it as a child , that very tree . It was huge and old then and that was 44 years ago . I used to daydream about it riding by on the way to school on our school bus . This is a killdeer 's nest . Yep . The bird makes the nest right on the ground . Sometimes in the darndest places . . . like , for instance in the middle of a busy driveway . I don 't think it 's an especially intelligent bird . It defends its nest by simply running off at your approach , dragging its wing and pretending to be wounded . Predators , thinking that it will be easy prey , follow it . When the killdeer thinks that the creature has been led far enough away from the nest , it simply picks up and flies away . Here 's mama back on her ' nest ' . I imagine that the warm rocks will make the eggs hatch very quickly , like an incubator . I did not want to get closer . These pictures were taken at a gravel heap for a road crew . Posted by You learn the most amazing things reading blogs . ' Up the duff ' sounds obscene , doesn 't it ? Who knew that it means ' pregnant ' in Australian ? Congratulations , Jeanie and V ! ( Note to Redlefty : Do not try this phrase on Redwifey , I am pretty sure that you can only say that in Australia and live to tell the tale . . . ) Anyhow , I 've learned a lot bumbling about on other people 's blogs . Today , my own questions were answered on Roxanne 's blog . If breast cancer usually metasticized to the lungs , to the bones , to the liver or to the brain , why are we not looking for cancer there ? Why are we ' waiting to see . . . ? ' Roxanne 's doctor explained it this way : If it becomes metatastic , it 's incurable . Catching it earlier won 't make a difference . No need for scans . Oh . Today was a busy day . I got information on for Rob and his son on public transportation for the wheelchair bound . Tim will take it with him tomorrow morning when he goes to work on the house . He told me that Rob came out of the nursing home and made straight for the house . That tickled me . When I called Mr . K to tell him to stop and talk to Tim , that we had some papers for him to fill out , he sounded very glad . I went to Erie to get my dry ice . It 's an hour and a half trip there , and back . I spent the rest of the day setting traps . It was a warm day , muggy , with a breeze blowing in the rain due that afternoon . I tramped though the fields and woods setting my traps , driving from site to site . At one point , I had a long walk to a wet area at the back of a farmers field . I trudged through a knee high field of grass . There were flowers too - daisies , and indian paint brushes , and clover , and phlox , a multitude tiny little flowers that , as a child , I used to pretend fairies slipped out at dusk to pick them for their little fairy tables in their charming fairy homes . I took a second to drop down into the grass and hug my knees to my chest , and just listen to the wind softly hissing through the grass , and the birds , and the buzzing of fat bees in the clover . I felt that if I closed my eyes , I would continue to hear the same sounds , but open them to find that I was in a different time , maybe wearing a bonnet and a long skirt . I love when that happens . I was painting again today . I told Mike and Tim that they needed to entertain themselves for the day because I wasn 't falling off the roof again . I 'm a gal who learns from her goofs . I gave that extension ladder wide berth , climbing in and out of the second floor window instead . At this point though , my feet were still firmly planted on the ground . Tim had hacked down the hedges on the side of the house . I hated for him to do it , but it was the only way to get to that side of the house to paint . He assured me that they would grow again in no time , but the next thing I know , he was wanting to cut down the large pine just to the side of the porch . He was also looking at a tree growing too near the fence in the back yard . I got busy painting . It has been my experience , with Tim , that once he gets a notion to wreak mayhem and destruction on the local flora , it 's best not to argue about it . If left to his own devices he usually gets to doing something else , and just never gets back to the issue of the trees , whereas , if you argue , that sort of imprints the whole thing into his psyche somehow . The tree will be gone , because if it isn 't , then he has lost the argument . I was willing to concede the tree at the fence line . I had already lost the battle on the hedges . I was not willing to lose the pine tree by the front porch . As I painted , ignoring Tim as he and one of the tenants discussed the pine tree by the front porch , I noticed a red truck pulling into the nursing home next door . I saw the same old man get out of it , with the same dog . They entered the nursing home , and it was not long before they were back outside . The young man moves his own wheel chair with his feet , and he made a beeline to inspect our work . " Hi , " I called out and went over to talk . Turns out , just as I had guessed , the old man was his father . The young man had a severe stroke , and was in the nursing home . The dog was his , and the father was keeping it for him . He comes , with the dog , nearly every day . A very ironic twist . Usually it 's the childrePosted by We are painting this house . We have removed the rotten dilapidated shutters , and we have begun to paint it green , not a dark green , but sort of an antique - ish green color from an ' historic house ' paint line . The windows will be trimmed in vanilla . We put a copper topped cupola at the roof peak to provide ventilation in the attic . We put on a new roof and new gutters and new soffit and fascia . It really is beginning to look like a changed house . ( Yes , BB , I will take a picture ) Anyways , I was up on the porch roof when Tim sent me down the ladder to get something from the trunk . I can 't remember now what it even was . I looked at the ladder feet , and they were set . Assuming that the ladder was locked ( and you know what they say about those people who assume : assuming makes an ASS out of U and ME . This time it did . ) It was a telescoping ladder , and it began to collapse . I grabbed for the roof with one hand , clung to the quickly collapsing ladder with the other . My shoes ( comfortable old slip ons ) went flying . One went completely to the sidewalk out front probably 20 feet away . The other nearly dropped on Mike 's head . There was no time to yell . Tim grabbed for me as I swung crazily in the air . The ladder swung out and I was hanging on to roof with one hand and the ladder with the other , suspended in the middle , holding on to both for dear life . Alerted by the dropping shoe , Mike looked up and grabbed the ladder at the bottom and pushed it back against the house . Once Tim had a firm hold of my belt loop , I was secure enough to let go of the ladder and grab the roof with both hands and pull myself up on the roof . Later , a resident of the nursing home was out with his father . Wheelchair bound , he watched us working for quite a while , fascinated at the progress we were making . His father , white haired , with the sunglasses you wear after cataract surgery , had brought the family dog , a nondescript black and tan hound of indeterminate breed . The trio talked quietly , the younger man 's comments were spoken with great difficulty Posted by Today a neighbor from one of the houses in town called for the name and phone number of the young man who did our gutter work . Before he hung up , he mentioned , " Oh , and you had a bear up a tree right behind your house today . " He related the story . The mother and another cub waited across the creek . " But then , " he goes on , " wingnut there , on the corner , you know who I mean , started feeding them sardines and peanut butter , and the mother and the other cub came right across the creek too . I told him you don 't want to be feeding the bears , but he don 't listen . " Fascinating stuff . Not only the bears . We live in the woods and I have yet to see a bear here this season , but we 've got them roaming through town . So yeah , that is interesting . But wingnut on the corner , that 's pretty interesting too . He 's had a pretty volatile relationship with his woman for some time now . Supposedly , he was sick of it and headed to Alaska . Guess he changed his mind , and decided that he could be eaten by bears right here . The neighbor is dead right . You don 't want to be feeding the bears . Well , it was bound to happen . I have so thoroughly blanketed the county with my reading glasses that today , when I was out and about , I saw something glinting on the ground . Amazed , I picked up a pair of reading glasses that I 'd previously lost . I am in a strange place . Friday 's episode in Subway caught me off guard . I 've been working hard . I 'm tired . The idea that , after ' fighting ' cancer , I 'm now ' waiting to see ' is actually kind of a stumble - step for me . I can 't get used to it , and I can 't say that I 'm comfortable with it . If the cancer comes back , I 'll have symptoms ( I didn 't have symptoms that I recognized before I found the lump . . . ) My bones ache . What if it 's not working hard , or walking a lot , or the tamoxifen ? I 'm tired . What if it 's not from long hours ? Getting mistaken for a lesbian was the icing on the cake . Understand , I 'm not homophobic . It 's just not who I am . A person 's sexuality is a part of their identity . I realized that I did not look feminine . I should have realized it already . I was at the Walmart after work , which means I was wearing my visored cap , my jeans , workboot and a tee shirt . A mentally disabled woman went by . She was part of a group and she was with an caregiver who was trying to teach them what was good food and what was bad food . Her attention wandered . She looked at me , mistaking me for a man , and then realizing I was a woman . She actually was so astounded that she stopped pushing her cart to comment on it . The aide was very matter of fact . ' Yes . She is . ' and on they went . Like I said , strange place . Strange time . The fact is , things change . What cannot be changed must be endured . These are my circumstances right now . It is what it is . Last night , I was thinking about it . I 've never been comfortable with my looks , and I 'm the kind of person that really cannot stand to look at herself . What is the opposite of vain ? Whatever that word is , it describes me . I decided , for the first time in my 52 years to find out where one goes to have a makeover . Working hard : while I take pleasure in the fact that I can work hard , I need to ratchet it down a notch . After my long day Friday , I was so exhausted Saturday that I had to lay down and take a nap . I slept for three solid hours and would have probably slept on if the phone had notPosted by My hair is growing back . It 's iron gray . It 's very short . I cannot stand the wig at all any more . I wear a hat when I 'm at work , but pretty much the rest of the time I just go with what I got . It 's short , I hate it , but in the great scheme of things , it 's really not a big deal . So I tell myself . Everyone is fascinated with my hair . The thing that I hear most often is ' Ooooh . I just want to touch it . ' I get petted more than my dog . Friday , I was standing in the line at Subway , patiently waiting to order a veggie sub . I was hot and tired . It was nearly 4 and I hadn 't eaten yet that day . I still had what ended up to be four hours of work in front of me . A woman walked by with such beautiful hair . It went all the way to her butt . It was a shiny sleek river down her back . It was just gorgeous hair . I was suddenly overcome with such a longing , and I couldn 't help staring . I realized that the woman with her ( her mother ? ) was glaring at me with such hostility that it startled me . I was pretty tired , and I didn 't figure it out , not right away . She thought I was a lesbian . I 'm trying so hard to be patient , but dear God , how I do want hair . . . Posted by I 'm the wife of a good man , the mother of good kids , the grandmother of sweet William . I am a student . A small time writer for the local paper . I am funny . I am serious . I am practical . Hardworking . I make great bread . I 'm loyal . |
Today was a gray and windy day . There were large storms all around us , although we got scarcely any rain . Still , the thunder fretted in the distance . The great masses of gray billowing clouds moving in varying thicknesses across the sun made the world dark , and then bright , and then strangely , a combination of both light and dark . Since beginning my ' Wild Blue Yonder ' , I 've developed an eye for wildflowers . I see them in a way that I never saw them before . Surely they were never so bright as they are this year ? I certainly could not have missed that . The killdeer eggs have hatched , and mama has absconded to the fields with them . I never even got to see them , let alone take a picture . I ate my lunch in an old cemetary today , reading epitaphs , trying to imagine what it was like to live , and to die before the Civil War . What was it like to lose three of your children before they were grown ? I walked around imagining stories to go with the tombstones . I drove past a farm today and saw a group of wild turkey scratching the ground side by side with the chickens . It made me laugh out loud . When I stopped by to speak with the Amish , I was glad to see the children come running , a bunch of them , bare feet flying as hands held their hats on their heads . Not just the ones I 'd been dealing with , but the whole neighborhood . We talked about mosquitoes , and I gave them ice cream and ice cold orange sodas . It was a day of mental snapshots , each image captured in my mind 's eye , soul satisfying , perfectly centered , focused , clear and rich in details . I 'm the luckiest person that I know . The wedding was in the woods . The bride was barefoot . The groom wore blue jeans . ( So did practically everyone else . ) Each place at the picnic table had a real horse shoe decorated with flowers and tulle bags of candy . We toasted hotdogs . There were sloppy joes and salads and beans , all manner of casual outdoor dining . The wedding cake was cute . The flower girl abdicated her flower girl duties , but looked darling , patiently squatting and placing an orange salamander on her head over and over . There were buggy rides . I got to hold babies , even the newest Abby Joy . There were swings and visiting . It was nice , this wedding in the woods . I hope they enjoy the raspberry bushes we bought them as a wedding present . I hope that they stay as happy as they looked this day . Life 's happening here . Looks like the times , they are a - changing . I don 't know for sure what is going to happen , and it just seems unfair that you should know before I do , so you 'll just have to wait . Today I was driving , thinking about things . I have been feeling increasingly ' led ' . Tim is convinced of the direction that I should go . He 's prayed about it and he believes that he has his answer . I prayed about it too , but I am more cautious about thinking that I know what to do next . I realized that the problem is that I have some pretty crappy self esteem . Really . Setting out on this new path would required me to believe in myself . I suck at believing in myself . " I want to be a biology teacher . " ( You 've always thought you were better than anyone else . ) I 'm not going to make a career out of the Army . Can I live at home while I look for a place to live ? I have a job . ( Go ahead , come on home , be a loser . ) When my marriage fell apart , the response was ' You made your bed , now you can lie in it . ' It doesn 't matter what has happened , if I am anywhere around , it will be my fault . I heard my mother say , once , crying , " I feel like a big zero . " I get that . Totally . I don 't fit in my family . I 'm a zero too . Family dynamics are a strange thing . I 've walked away from the anger and the fighting and the accusations . I will never have a valid point of view . My opinion will never matter . It is what it is . While I am content with my choices , while I 'm at peace with my life , the fact remains , my self - esteem sucks . I have good and supportive friends and relatives and readers and all of it . Today I was trying to come to grips with this decision , praying about it , weighing things , and the inner dialogue went something like " Just who do you think you are ? ! ! ! " The voice varied between my parents , or my ex or the bosses at my last job , but over and over , as I pondered things , I kept hearing it . " Who in the hell do you think you are ? " I spent the whole day trying to get comfortable with what come next , to figure out what to do next , to step ouPosted by The killdeer eggs have still not hatched . I 've been watching closely , because I want to get pictures of the babies . Oh . They are the most darling little puffballs darting about . Each time I go to the barns where I store my equipment , the mama killdeer puts on a dramatic display . She flaps around wildly , screaming ' Keeeeekeeeeeeeekeeeeeeekeeeee ! ' . The display is meant to say , " I 'm wounded , easy prey , far more worth your while than that nest of eggs . . . " taking her ( and the predator ) further and further from her nest . When she has led the predator far enough from the nest , she simply flies up into the air and circles about until it is safe to come back . This particular bird has become so used to me checking out that nest that she has begun to nervously ( but quietly ) watch me , forgoing the display . FogCarl SandburgThe fog comes on little cat feet . It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on . * * * * * * * * From the harbor and the city , the fog moved on , and visited here tonight . The approach was magical to watch . Just down the road , we saw a bear . He paused briefly , and then turned and padded quickly away into the dark and foggy woods . The back deck is arranged . The lightning bugs are out . Cara helped me plant some planters . It was a quiet end to a day filled with serendipity . We shopped at Goodwill . Her latest passion is old leather suitcases from the thirties and forties . We found a magnificent one for $ 3 . 99 . It even still had the key . There have a wonderful 29 cent sale going on . I found three pairs of capris , one pair of khaki levis , a silk pantsuit , and four tank tops . Cara got a beautiful midnight blue short party dress , three shirts , and a pair of leather clogs that I wanted desperately but they were too small for me , a perfect fit for Cara . She also found a pair of stylish but practical shoes that she can wear to work . The clothing was all 29 cent each . I also found a glass bottle with the wire and ceramic stopper perfect for making blueberry vinegar . It was great fun , such a nice day . At the end of it , I heard the best thing that a parent can hear . My daughter , the adventurer , said , " There 's just something about coming home . " May it always be so . The other day , I was out , minding my own business , when I heard a ' pssst ! Over here ! ! ! ! ' I 'd never heard of Equine On - Line Dating Service . Hey . . . My name 's Winnie , and I am hot to trot . I like walking in the rain , and sugar cubes . Am anxious to connect with the studs at Granite Glen . Posted by I think that I 'm on the downhill slide of all this drug stuff . Finally . I have gotten to the point that more of my night passes while I 'm alseep than when I am wide awake wondering what made me dream that . I came to a conclusion about those dreams . They were simply very literal manifestations of my thoughts and fears . Take the statement : " I love asparagus " , which is true . It played out literally in my dreams . There were dreams about huge black birds , and about being lost , and small bite - y dogs . I should have written them down . They 've just just sort of receded into the dark recesses of what appears to be , anyway , a darker mind than I knew I ever had . So now I 'm sleeping again , and sleeping soundly , waking up in the morning craving more sleep . I usually wake up at least once a night so parched I have to get up and drink a bottle of water , but things are getting back to normal , and for that I am everlastingly grateful . Cara is home for the weekend . She actually got home Thursday night but met a friend for coffee before she bothered pulling in this driveway . ( Ouch . ) She called me about 2 : 30 in the afternoon . " Mom , " she said , " Will you make pizza for us tonight ? Can the gang stay over ? " " Well , " I said , " I have to run over and see Mary and Danny tonight . " They had just gotten home from their trip out west . They had gone to see the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert , Sequoia National Park , Las Vegas , bunch of places . Armed with their new digital camera and a rental car , they had two weeks of adventuring recorded . I wanted to see the pictures and hear their stories . Mary was also recuperating from the day 's adventures in radiotherapy and I wanted to see how she was doing . Cara listened to this and then said , " Wait . You made plans when you knew that I was coming home for the weekend ? " Me : " Well , yeah . I figured that you would be out running with James , Johnna , Sarah , and Tommy . " Cara : " Well , yeah , but . . . " " Cara , " I said , " I 've got a life ! " So I went home from work , showered , made two pizzas ( cheated , used premade crusts ) , Posted by It is no secret , if you have read this blog long , that I love thunder and lightning storms . I do . I like the wind , and the grumbling thunder that gets louder and louder , until with a flash of temper unleashed , the storm hits . I like to watch the storms approach . I like to smell the ozone . The best storms are the ones that come in from more than one direction . The thunder rolls across one end of the sky to the other . I love that sensation of being in the middle of something way larger than myself . We have a storm moving in right now , and I 'm waiting . Never does a storm move in without Jethro Tull playing in the back of my mind . They 're one of my favorites too . We 've lost the power once already while I was typing this and listening to the thunder , so I will close and shut down the computer . This is one of my favorite trees . It 's a weeping willow , and the thing is huge . It would probably take at least 4 or 5 people holding hands to span the trunk . I cannot imagine how old this thing is . The bark is fascinating . I took a picture today , because as I was wreaking havoc on the local mosquito population , the owner mentioned that they were going to cut the tree down . It 's so old and rotten that it is ' an disaster waiting to happen ' . This is not my favorite tree , but I drove past that , and never thought to take a picture . I 've got some Amish kids enlisted in the war on mosquitoes . It will be an ongoing educational project , but a very good opportunity to work with a part of the county 's population that I had previously not reached . When their mothers were giving them permission to go on a walk with me , the discussion took place in machine gun rapid German . We set out to look for larva . I explained what they would be looking for . The kids were so quiet that I began to wonder how well they spoke English . " You know , " I said , " If you 're working for me , it only seems fair that we work some sort of a payment out . Perhaps we could barter . Do you all like popsicles ? " Eyebrows went up and they looked back and forth at each other grinning . Yeah . Their English ? As good as their German , I think . I 'm not sure where the idea came for popsicles and ice cream bars , etc . , but it was pretty darn good . I realized later , since they don 't have electric ( no freezers ) , things like popsicles and ice cream treats are probably not a common occurance . So I 've got my own little squad of ' skeeter beaters ' . They will locate larva , I will treat . I walked and walked today , miles and miles . I found some wonderful white flowers ( haven 't looked them up yet , so can 't tell you what they are ) . I wanted them for ' Wild Blue Yonder ' . Unfortunately this flower ( which looks like baby 's breath , and grows in clumps ) is , as I said , white . Last night , as I was not sleeping , I kept thinking of those flowers . They were so gorgeous . Suddenly it came to me : WiPosted by Our computer is old , and although we have DSL , it still is frustratingly slow . We got it from Walmart back when Dylan was a junior in high school , braving crowds at the Walmart on ' black Friday ' . There was an awesome sale , and we were trying to replace a ten year old computer . Doing the math , this makes our current computer nearly seven years old . Now since our family tends to keep everything until it falls apart ( Tim 's car has 173K miles on it , mine not a lot less ) , I expected to be grumbling at my computer for a few more years yet . It 's just our way . Saturday , we went baby Brady 's christening . When we got home , I downloaded the pictures from the camera to the computer to send them to all of the kids . It took me 14 minutes to get the pictures to download . It took me another quarter of an hour to attach them to the e - mail , and then I clicked ' send ' and sat down to watch a movie with Tim . Somewhere between the beginning and the end of the movie , it sent . I knew it would take a while . Tim began talking about the television . Since the switchover to digital , we don 't get anything but PBS . This was news to me . I only watch TV on Saturday night , and that is when we watch our PBS line up , so I hadn 't noticed . We have the converter box , because our TV is old . Tim was wondering whether we should invest in a new aerial . Maybe just get a new TV . We discussed cable , and satellite , but in the end , decided that really , neither of us watch enough TV to warrant spending the money . That kind of surprised me . We watched TV when the kids were home , but now , I guess we 're just too busy with other stuff to think about it . I made the statement that if we were going to spend money on something , I 'd rather have a new computer . Tim ruefully agreed . I came home tonight , and guess what ? We have a new computer ! It 's a Dell , an All in One . Flat screen monitor . Really , the amazing thing is that there is so little to it . I looked at our old one , with the tower , with the printer and the speakers and the mouse , and wires every where . I looked at thPosted by Today was a nice day . I got a lot of housework done , baked a shepherd 's pie for lunch , and talked to a friend from Michigan . His wife died recently , and I was worried about him . Out of the blue , I received a card from him , and a picture he had taken of yellow ladyslippers ( we 've only seen pink before . Reading his letter , he 's had a very rough time of it , but , like me , he 's discovered the healing peace of long periods spent tramping about the woods with your eyes wide open . I immediately called him on the phone and spent a pleasant hour visiting while continuing to clean . ( Remember the ' olden days ' when you had to stay in one place to talk to the phone ? ) We went to Johnsonburg this afternoon . Tim 's brother waited a long time to marry , but he found a wonderful woman and got married when he was forty . Today , I watched little Brady get baptized , a strapping boy with big feet and big hands . Dawn looks tired ( but far better than the last time we saw her ) , but she has a glow about her . I gave her a hug and told her the same thing that I had told Norm the night before : Dawn looks like a woman who 's had every dream she 's ever had come true . She still looks that way . Norm held the baby so carefully , and I loved that he could not stop looking at him . By the end of it all , I decided that Norm also looked like a man who 's had every dream he ever had come true . A new family . I was teary eyed with happiness for all of us . Leaving that ceremony , I saw , one street over , a bride and groom posing for pictures on the front steps of one of the historic buildings . They looked pretty happy too . Two different ceremonies , two rites of passages , life changes . Unaccountably , I found myself getting teary eyed all over again . Life really is beautiful , isn 't it ? Today 's symptom seems to be pain in the hands and feet . I got carsick in the one hour ride to Johnsonburg and got carsick on the one hour ride back . I am starting to think that I will never sleep again . I am exhausted , actually sick with it , but it is 2 : 18 . I have not yet fallen asleep . Posted by Sorry for the frustration yesterday . I 'm rather shocked by all of this . But , I 'm over a week into it , only took it for , eh , maybe 3 or 4 months , so I can 't believe that I am NOT over the worst of things . So let 's do a survey of the bright spots to all of this . Hm . Well . When the visual disturbances began , and this sort of giant shiver thing that ran up my spine and ' exploded ' at the base of my skull with a dull roar that blocked all other sounds for a few seconds , I seriously found myself wondering ' What the hell ? ! ! ! Is this a sign of brain cancer or something ? ' So figuring out that it was not cancer metasticizing was a relief . * stands thinking * The teeth chattering chills were a wonderful break from the hot flashes . . . * thinks some more * It provided quite a bit of entertainment trying to figure out why I would have dreamt such a thing as that for Pete 's sake . . . ( or , yeah , I do love asparagus , but I usually eat it ) * ponders * Yeah . Okay . That 's all I got . No joking around . This past couple weeks has not been a really fun time . I have been so exhausted and sick . At first , I thought that I was coming down with the flu . I even missed a day of work . Today , I was so sick that moving my head made me nauseous . I headed out to do some treatment and surveillance at some of my hot spots , but quickly realized that I was not safe to be driving my truck . I returned to the office and did paperwork . I also began to do some serious reading on this drug and withdrawal . One person 's account : " I stopped taking the drug for 4 days . For the first couple of days I seemed to feel fine . . . just very , very tired due to heavy dreams and the inability to sleep well at all . Once the 3rd and 4th day hit . . . . it has been awful . I am moody , I feel light - headed , my head feels ' clogged ' , as though I have ' medicine head ' , I am very nausous and emotional . My heart feels like it is going to pound through my chest . I feel so , so icky . " Another : " Day One and Two off medication : Brain zaps ( you could swear you hear your eyeballs moving ! ) , very dry mouth , a bit hyper ( more talkative than usual ) , more sensitive to heatDays Three and Four : Brain zaps still there but not quite as intense , mild headache , face feeling flushed , sweating more than usual ( during exercise ) , general flu like symptoms ( muscle aches , sore throat ) Days Five and Six : Still having brain zaps , mild headache , itchy , clogged head feeling , slight dizziness , just general yucky feeling . " How about : " As far as the symptoms you are talking about , these are mine when experiencing the withdrawal : - sick stomach - dizzy / vertigo - can 't concentrate or form clear thoughts - speech comes out wrong due to the lack of clear thoughts - hyper periods - heavy head - extremely emotional , go from sad to angry very fast with really no reasons - brain shocks , these are the worst along with being dizzy , its like an electric spark runs up my spine and bursts right at the top of my neck when it hits the brain - hearing things , can 't really explain what I hear , almost like I can hear Posted by Still dragging tired , but life goes on . Last night , I picked up Mary and we went to my sister 's house for supper . I brought the end of last summer 's strawberries from the freezer . We had strawberry shortcake for dessert . We all sat at the table exchanging stories . Although Mary is a new friend for me , she and my sister were dear friends during high school . My sister 's sister - in - law , Linda , joined us . Supper was excellent . My sister , Anna , made the main course , swiss steak . Linda made some excellent bread . Mary made the salad , and it was a good one . We lingered over good food and the stories came one right after another , and the laughter was nonstop . It has been a long time since I have laughed that long and that heartily . It was a joy . And when we left , at the ungodly hour ( for me , anyhow ) of 10 PM , I saw for the first time that the fireflies were out . I 've been so exhausted that I haven 't been outside after dark for , gosh , I don 't know how long . When I finish work tonight , I 've got a plan . Our robins have left the nest last week . I can finally pull the deck furniture out and set up the back porch . And when I am done , I am going to take a while to sit on the porch swing and watch the fireflies . Firefly season doesn 't last long here . A month , maybe six weeks . I missed the young robins ' first flight , but I 'm not going to miss fireflies . I 'm not much of a pill person . Really . I believe that I 'm doing remarkably well to be remembering my 5 each morning . But one of the pills did not seem to be controlling the symptoms that it was supposed to control . I started reading up on this drug and was surprised to find that it was quite a powerful drug with an assortment of side effects , some of which were already troubling me . It occurred to me that really , taking this drug was like swatting mosquitoes with a baseball bat , and so I quit taking the drug . Cold turkey . I suppose that I really hadn 't ought to have done that . I cannot say whether or not my impulsive decision had anything to do with the events of the next few days . After struggling to get through my work day for most of last week , I had my powerhouse Saturday , and then I was flat on my back sick for the next two and a half days , sleeping 10 and 12 hours at a time , getting up for two and falling back to sleep for several more hours . Strange dreams , and nightmares too . Nausea , and sweating and chills . I 've still got no appetite , although I can drink water by the quart . It seems to be on the downhill side now , and I went back to work this morning . What a few days that was , and let me tell you , there is nothing going to get me to take another one of those pills . Ever . Mind you , I 've no idea if they actually were at the root of all of this , but , by golly , my mind is made up , so don 't be confusing me with facts . Today I worked nine hours and came home , got our truck and headed out to shovel a truckload of compost . I drove it back home and then shoveled it off again . I 'm sweaty and tired , and have just polished off another quart of water . I 'll take a long hot shower and then I expect to sleep soundly tonight , untroubled by nightmares . After feeling like crap for most of the week , I finally ' snapped out of it ' . Still don 't know what was up , but I was so exhausted that it was all I could do to get myself home after a day at work . After falling into bed and sleeping for ten hours straight , I finally woke up with energy . Today I painted . Then I came home and I mowed our mega lawn . I weeded one of my gardens , mulched it . My sister mentioned that she 'd love some yellow iris . I have very pale yellow ones , bright yellow ones , yellow ones with brown , yellow with cream . I decided that I 'd better dig them up while they still had flowers on them , and I could tell them apart . I 'm sort of a slap dash flower person . I throw everything everywhere , and never remember what is where , so every year is a big surprise for me . As long as I was digging , I also dug up a batch of my deep purple ones with lavender , and a burgundy colored one with cream . I had quite a carload of iris for her . I planted some shrubs . I also began my new garden . I 've dubbed it ' Wild Blue Yonder ' . It 's a patch of wildflowers , all blue , that I collect as I tramp around the county after mosquitoes . The day ended before I ran out of steam . That was a wonderful change . I took part in a ' Relay for Life ' as a walker , back the year that my father died , as a way to honor him . I remember walking and thinking about him . How strange it was this year to be part of the opening ceremonies , to hear my own name read , to walk the ' survivor lap ' . It still seems a bit unreal . Yesterday 's news bothered me something awful . After 88 years on this earth , the man was still so full of hatred . How can that be ? What does God do with people like that ? How can there be freaks out there applauding this action ? Today , as I worked , I fretted about this , about hatred in general , about anger , and the sorry state of this world . As I worked in a swamp , the wind rustled the cattails . " sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhh . . . " was the sound , as if God had whispered to the wind , who passed it on to the cattails , who shared the word with me . And so I shushed . Right there in the middle of the swamp , I was still , and I knew that He was God . It 's probably stupid to have favorite trees , but I do . Most of them are old and gnarled and huge . This one appears to have been struck by lightning at some point . It 's a great big tree though . Wouldn 't these branches be neat to climb into ? This is not my favorite tree . My favorite tree appears to be dying . I 'll have to get a picture of it the next time I 'm in the area . It 's my favorite tree because I distinctly remember it as a child , that very tree . It was huge and old then and that was 44 years ago . I used to daydream about it riding by on the way to school on our school bus . This is a killdeer 's nest . Yep . The bird makes the nest right on the ground . Sometimes in the darndest places . . . like , for instance in the middle of a busy driveway . I don 't think it 's an especially intelligent bird . It defends its nest by simply running off at your approach , dragging its wing and pretending to be wounded . Predators , thinking that it will be easy prey , follow it . When the killdeer thinks that the creature has been led far enough away from the nest , it simply picks up and flies away . Here 's mama back on her ' nest ' . I imagine that the warm rocks will make the eggs hatch very quickly , like an incubator . I did not want to get closer . These pictures were taken at a gravel heap for a road crew . Posted by You learn the most amazing things reading blogs . ' Up the duff ' sounds obscene , doesn 't it ? Who knew that it means ' pregnant ' in Australian ? Congratulations , Jeanie and V ! ( Note to Redlefty : Do not try this phrase on Redwifey , I am pretty sure that you can only say that in Australia and live to tell the tale . . . ) Anyhow , I 've learned a lot bumbling about on other people 's blogs . Today , my own questions were answered on Roxanne 's blog . If breast cancer usually metasticized to the lungs , to the bones , to the liver or to the brain , why are we not looking for cancer there ? Why are we ' waiting to see . . . ? ' Roxanne 's doctor explained it this way : If it becomes metatastic , it 's incurable . Catching it earlier won 't make a difference . No need for scans . Oh . Today was a busy day . I got information on for Rob and his son on public transportation for the wheelchair bound . Tim will take it with him tomorrow morning when he goes to work on the house . He told me that Rob came out of the nursing home and made straight for the house . That tickled me . When I called Mr . K to tell him to stop and talk to Tim , that we had some papers for him to fill out , he sounded very glad . I went to Erie to get my dry ice . It 's an hour and a half trip there , and back . I spent the rest of the day setting traps . It was a warm day , muggy , with a breeze blowing in the rain due that afternoon . I tramped though the fields and woods setting my traps , driving from site to site . At one point , I had a long walk to a wet area at the back of a farmers field . I trudged through a knee high field of grass . There were flowers too - daisies , and indian paint brushes , and clover , and phlox , a multitude tiny little flowers that , as a child , I used to pretend fairies slipped out at dusk to pick them for their little fairy tables in their charming fairy homes . I took a second to drop down into the grass and hug my knees to my chest , and just listen to the wind softly hissing through the grass , and the birds , and the buzzing of fat bees in the clover . I felt that if I closed my eyes , I would continue to hear the same sounds , but open them to find that I was in a different time , maybe wearing a bonnet and a long skirt . I love when that happens . I was painting again today . I told Mike and Tim that they needed to entertain themselves for the day because I wasn 't falling off the roof again . I 'm a gal who learns from her goofs . I gave that extension ladder wide berth , climbing in and out of the second floor window instead . At this point though , my feet were still firmly planted on the ground . Tim had hacked down the hedges on the side of the house . I hated for him to do it , but it was the only way to get to that side of the house to paint . He assured me that they would grow again in no time , but the next thing I know , he was wanting to cut down the large pine just to the side of the porch . He was also looking at a tree growing too near the fence in the back yard . I got busy painting . It has been my experience , with Tim , that once he gets a notion to wreak mayhem and destruction on the local flora , it 's best not to argue about it . If left to his own devices he usually gets to doing something else , and just never gets back to the issue of the trees , whereas , if you argue , that sort of imprints the whole thing into his psyche somehow . The tree will be gone , because if it isn 't , then he has lost the argument . I was willing to concede the tree at the fence line . I had already lost the battle on the hedges . I was not willing to lose the pine tree by the front porch . As I painted , ignoring Tim as he and one of the tenants discussed the pine tree by the front porch , I noticed a red truck pulling into the nursing home next door . I saw the same old man get out of it , with the same dog . They entered the nursing home , and it was not long before they were back outside . The young man moves his own wheel chair with his feet , and he made a beeline to inspect our work . " Hi , " I called out and went over to talk . Turns out , just as I had guessed , the old man was his father . The young man had a severe stroke , and was in the nursing home . The dog was his , and the father was keeping it for him . He comes , with the dog , nearly every day . A very ironic twist . Usually it 's the childrePosted by We are painting this house . We have removed the rotten dilapidated shutters , and we have begun to paint it green , not a dark green , but sort of an antique - ish green color from an ' historic house ' paint line . The windows will be trimmed in vanilla . We put a copper topped cupola at the roof peak to provide ventilation in the attic . We put on a new roof and new gutters and new soffit and fascia . It really is beginning to look like a changed house . ( Yes , BB , I will take a picture ) Anyways , I was up on the porch roof when Tim sent me down the ladder to get something from the trunk . I can 't remember now what it even was . I looked at the ladder feet , and they were set . Assuming that the ladder was locked ( and you know what they say about those people who assume : assuming makes an ASS out of U and ME . This time it did . ) It was a telescoping ladder , and it began to collapse . I grabbed for the roof with one hand , clung to the quickly collapsing ladder with the other . My shoes ( comfortable old slip ons ) went flying . One went completely to the sidewalk out front probably 20 feet away . The other nearly dropped on Mike 's head . There was no time to yell . Tim grabbed for me as I swung crazily in the air . The ladder swung out and I was hanging on to roof with one hand and the ladder with the other , suspended in the middle , holding on to both for dear life . Alerted by the dropping shoe , Mike looked up and grabbed the ladder at the bottom and pushed it back against the house . Once Tim had a firm hold of my belt loop , I was secure enough to let go of the ladder and grab the roof with both hands and pull myself up on the roof . Later , a resident of the nursing home was out with his father . Wheelchair bound , he watched us working for quite a while , fascinated at the progress we were making . His father , white haired , with the sunglasses you wear after cataract surgery , had brought the family dog , a nondescript black and tan hound of indeterminate breed . The trio talked quietly , the younger man 's comments were spoken with great difficulty Posted by Today a neighbor from one of the houses in town called for the name and phone number of the young man who did our gutter work . Before he hung up , he mentioned , " Oh , and you had a bear up a tree right behind your house today . " He related the story . The mother and another cub waited across the creek . " But then , " he goes on , " wingnut there , on the corner , you know who I mean , started feeding them sardines and peanut butter , and the mother and the other cub came right across the creek too . I told him you don 't want to be feeding the bears , but he don 't listen . " Fascinating stuff . Not only the bears . We live in the woods and I have yet to see a bear here this season , but we 've got them roaming through town . So yeah , that is interesting . But wingnut on the corner , that 's pretty interesting too . He 's had a pretty volatile relationship with his woman for some time now . Supposedly , he was sick of it and headed to Alaska . Guess he changed his mind , and decided that he could be eaten by bears right here . The neighbor is dead right . You don 't want to be feeding the bears . Well , it was bound to happen . I have so thoroughly blanketed the county with my reading glasses that today , when I was out and about , I saw something glinting on the ground . Amazed , I picked up a pair of reading glasses that I 'd previously lost . I am in a strange place . Friday 's episode in Subway caught me off guard . I 've been working hard . I 'm tired . The idea that , after ' fighting ' cancer , I 'm now ' waiting to see ' is actually kind of a stumble - step for me . I can 't get used to it , and I can 't say that I 'm comfortable with it . If the cancer comes back , I 'll have symptoms ( I didn 't have symptoms that I recognized before I found the lump . . . ) My bones ache . What if it 's not working hard , or walking a lot , or the tamoxifen ? I 'm tired . What if it 's not from long hours ? Getting mistaken for a lesbian was the icing on the cake . Understand , I 'm not homophobic . It 's just not who I am . A person 's sexuality is a part of their identity . I realized that I did not look feminine . I should have realized it already . I was at the Walmart after work , which means I was wearing my visored cap , my jeans , workboot and a tee shirt . A mentally disabled woman went by . She was part of a group and she was with an caregiver who was trying to teach them what was good food and what was bad food . Her attention wandered . She looked at me , mistaking me for a man , and then realizing I was a woman . She actually was so astounded that she stopped pushing her cart to comment on it . The aide was very matter of fact . ' Yes . She is . ' and on they went . Like I said , strange place . Strange time . The fact is , things change . What cannot be changed must be endured . These are my circumstances right now . It is what it is . Last night , I was thinking about it . I 've never been comfortable with my looks , and I 'm the kind of person that really cannot stand to look at herself . What is the opposite of vain ? Whatever that word is , it describes me . I decided , for the first time in my 52 years to find out where one goes to have a makeover . Working hard : while I take pleasure in the fact that I can work hard , I need to ratchet it down a notch . After my long day Friday , I was so exhausted Saturday that I had to lay down and take a nap . I slept for three solid hours and would have probably slept on if the phone had notPosted by My hair is growing back . It 's iron gray . It 's very short . I cannot stand the wig at all any more . I wear a hat when I 'm at work , but pretty much the rest of the time I just go with what I got . It 's short , I hate it , but in the great scheme of things , it 's really not a big deal . So I tell myself . Everyone is fascinated with my hair . The thing that I hear most often is ' Ooooh . I just want to touch it . ' I get petted more than my dog . Friday , I was standing in the line at Subway , patiently waiting to order a veggie sub . I was hot and tired . It was nearly 4 and I hadn 't eaten yet that day . I still had what ended up to be four hours of work in front of me . A woman walked by with such beautiful hair . It went all the way to her butt . It was a shiny sleek river down her back . It was just gorgeous hair . I was suddenly overcome with such a longing , and I couldn 't help staring . I realized that the woman with her ( her mother ? ) was glaring at me with such hostility that it startled me . I was pretty tired , and I didn 't figure it out , not right away . She thought I was a lesbian . I 'm trying so hard to be patient , but dear God , how I do want hair . . . Posted by I 'm the wife of a good man , the mother of good kids , the grandmother of sweet William . I am a student . A small time writer for the local paper . I am funny . I am serious . I am practical . Hardworking . I make great bread . I 'm loyal . |
You know , it 's interesting ; I 've been thinking about this a lot lately . Hollywood has the wrong idea about widows . They treat it like it 's this glamorous thing : " We have this love story to write , and we need this tragic woman character who 's going to meet this man … I know ! We 'll make her a widow ! " I was watching " It 's Complicated " the other day , with Maryl Streep . Mary Kay Place has a small role as one of her girlfriends and they say to her " You 're so lucky John is dead , so you don 't ever have to run into him . " That really pissed me off . Oh yeah , she 's lucky . I wouldn 't wish widowhood on my worst enemy . They SO have the wrong idea . They don 't ever show the real " widowness " of the widow . It 's always just the set - up . It 's just the part of her that makes her tragic and somehow more appealing to the new man . The reality is , how could that be appealing to any man ? I always gave Sawan lots of credit for loving me , because I 'm a difficult woman to love . I told him regularly that I was thankful that he loved me because I knew how difficult I was . I was strong willed and not teachable and independent and I came with lots of baggage . I used to make jokes about my " baggage , " that if I had to have some I liked to picture it as being cute little suitcases … probably polka dotted with my initials monogrammed on them . Now add to it that I 'm a widow … and I think there 's no suitcase big enough to hold this baggage . I come with so much baggage now that it would maybe fit on a barge , and maybe the tugboat that pushes it around is cute ? I wonder how any man could feel like he was anything other than second choice ? I actually had someone tell me in the first few months , in a very sweet way , trying to comfort me , " Don 't worry , you 're going to meet the love of your life . " I didn 't know how to respond . I already did meet the love of my life . So I try and do this : I try to stay away from the " hero worship " as I 've heard it called , the remembering only the best things aI suppose no one really wants Hollywood to make a story about actual widowhood , because it would be incredibly boring . Cry , grieve , watch TV to try to get your mind off of crying and grieving , eat sliced turkey standing in front of the fridge , cry , grieve , repeat . And also , I have never been less glamorous than I am now . I just bought my 3rd pair of black sweatpants . That being said , I am afraid to let you all in to how dark it can really be . This has been an incredibly hard week , with it just being the anniversary . For my 5th ever post I 'm just not quite ready to let you all see that . I have been trying to think about all of the things that I 'm thankful for in an effort to cheer myself up in this dark place . We got Arthur two years ago . I begged for a dog the whole first year we were married . For some reason , this was a battle that I was unable to win for awhile , which was surprising , because I always won . But every time I would bring it up there was something that needed to be done first , like cleaning my room ( I 'm not kidding ) . Plus , it 's expensive to have a dog and we didn 't have ANY money . Two years ago in August , both my sisters moved away from Denver in the same week . Unprepared for how sad this would make me ( I woke up crying every morning for a couple of weeks ) , Sawan said " I think we should get a dog . " I was of course overjoyed . We called every breeder in the paper and found one that had one male puppy left from their last litter . We had to drive all the way out to Burlington ( almost to the Kansas border ) to get him , but it was worth it . He was always meant to be my dog , but I didn 't get to go to pick him up , and by the time the drive home was over , he had wrapped himself securely around Sawan 's little finger and he was most certainly his dog . Sawan did all of the training ( well , most of it ) , spent the first few nights with him crying on the couch ( the puppy , not Sawan ) and we loved being dog parents . He went with us everywhere . Now he is just my dog , but he is my constant companion and I don 't know what I 'd do without him , not sure how I would have made it through this last year if I didn 't have him . He is a Westie . He looks like a white Scottie . He answers to all manner of names , given my family 's penchant for nicknames . Sawan and I always called him " the Fella , " so he answers to that , as well as Phil , a derivative of that , and Artie , Arturo , Tudie , Artie Mortie ( a reference to a hilarious Michael Caine movie , called " Without a Clue " that 's a Sherlock Holmes spoof and I highly recommend ) and Chavez , his new one , that my cousin Nick has given him . He knows when I 'm sad and immediately comes to comfort me , by licking my tears , then laying his head on my chest in a " hug " . He sleeps with me in my bed , and it 's a huge comfort to know that I 'm not alone there . He is the cutest thing in the morning , waking up and kissing my face , then doing his downward dog yoga stretching , then making his loud yawn and sticking his tongue out , Snoopy style . He begs by the door to go with me when I leave , and on the occasion that he doesn 't get to go , he runs to the window and sticks his head out of the blinds to watch me leave . When I come home , often 8 hrs later from work , he 's sitting there with his head out of the blinds watching for me , prompting me to hope that he wasn 't waiting there ALL day . He lets me hold him like a baby and smother him with affection and I am just so thankful for this little bundle of comfort . The salon , the sort of albatross around our neck , was under contract to be sold . We were set to close next week . Two weeks before that , we had had a frank conversation that finally led to us agreeing that it was time to have a baby . Me finally making him understand that the reason I wanted a baby so badly was so much about him . About me loving him . About wanting to have something that was half him and half me . That I wanted to have a chance to have a family to somehow right some of the wrongs in how he had been raised . Give him the chance to be the father that he never had . We had set the goal for " pulling the goalie " September 1st . I had been making phone calls to get insurance changed . Called my doctor to find out if I had my IUD removed how long we could expect to wait before being able to get pregnant , and then waiting to make the appointment until I heard from insurance . Sawan got up early for school that Monday . He had started real estate school a week earlier . This was the beginning of week two . He had a big test that he had been studying for . He was finally excited about a new career . This was something that he was passionate about , something that we both thought that he would be good at . We loved walking through neighborhoods , looking at old construction versus new construction , who had done it right , who had done it wrong . We obsessively watched HGTV . Just last night he told me , as we were watching " design star " " I fuckin ' love being married to you . " We just did dumb stuff like that together and totally enjoyed it . We were such nerds and didn 't care . We just loved each other . It was my day off , technically , but I had a big day planned , and was expecting to hear from my mom at any point that my Grandfather , Papa Howard , had died . So there was no sleeping after he woke me up when he was getting ready for school . I got up to be with him a little bit before he left for school . I made the coffee . I was standing in the kitchen in my too - big t - shirt that I put on after I got up to walk around the house in and was still wearing my mouth guard that I need for TMJ . He scolded me … " Baby , what are you doing up ? " I told him that I needed to get started . I had acupuncture , a haircut with Dani , and I was going to have to get to the shop to move clients around to deal with going to the funeral and also that I would probably have to go find something to wear to the funeral because none of my clothes fit me . " Ok , baby . Have a good day . I 'll call you later about the game . " We were supposed to go to the Rockies game that night . He was still feeling under the weather , though ( he had had a low grade fever all weekend ) so we weren 't sure it was going to happen . I told him good luck on his test that morning . He kissed me goodbye . He never kissed me well when he was sick , always afraid that he would get me sick and so they were chaste little pecks . I still had my mouthgaurd in anyway , so it was a funny , sort of sad little kiss goodbye , love you baby , have a great day , see you later . I got ready for my day , took a shower and got dressed . I put on my denim capris and my black old navy puffed sleeved t - shirt that I never realized I was putting on for the last time . How I 'd never be able to stand to see those clothes ever again . I got the call from my mom as I was leaving the house . I was just pulling out onto Colorado Blvd . She told me that Papa had died at about 3 in the morning . She had been with him all night . She knew that the time was coming and so she had just gotten to stay with him , singing to him and holding his hand . It was so beautiful to hear the story . I called Sawan to tell him the news . I relayed her story and he said that it was so amazing that they got to have that time together . What a gift . For anyone to get to die that way . I told him I was going to go to my appointments and then try to start making arrangements . He was going to finish up at school and then see if there was anything he could do to help . He finished school around noon and we had just texted back and forth a bit . I actually talked to him about 2 and he said he was feeling pretty bad , did we still want to try to go to the Rockies game that night ? I said that I was feeling pretty stressed out with everything that I had to get done and maybe we could just skip it ? He liked that idea . He told me to just take all the time I needed , he was feeling pretty bad and was going to just rest . I made all the phone calls I needed to move my clients around after booking my ticket , then set off to buy something to wear for the funeral . I was making pretty good time , it was only about 5 : 30 . I called him and we talked about my haircut . He hated it when I tried something new . He hated it when it was short . So I warned him . He said that as long as I liked it he would like it , too , which I knew wasn 't true but was sweet of him to say . He said he was so sorry but he just didn 't feel good enough to get something together for dinner . I told him it was no big deal , I should be taking care of him and I was so sorry that I wasn 't home doing that . I would come home and bring him dinner just as soon as I could . I had one more stop after this and then I 'd call him on my way to Target and see what he wanted for dinner from the store . He said not to worry about me not taking care of him . He was a big boy , and he and Arthur , our little dog , were going to lay down and take a nap . Made my quick stop , headed to Target and picked up the prescriptions , but when I called him to see what he wanted for dinner he didn 't answer . I figured he was still sleeping . I didn 't worry about it , but I slowed my pace a bit . I picked out chicken soup , the good kind from the deli . Then I got stuff for his lunches for the rest of the week , since he wasn 't feeling well I figured he hadn 't gotten that done today . I bought him lunchmeat and bread and chips and string cheese . I bought coffee . Then I headed home with my groceries in my recyclable bags . I made the illegal turn at 11th . Not sure why I did it that way that day but it always sticks in my head . I open the door to the condo and Arthur is freaking out . He always freaks out when I walk in . Jumps up , is excited to see me , but in hindsight , this was a different kind of freak - out . He was barking a shrill , high - pitched bark that I had never heard before . I greet the dog , put down the groceries , and with all the commotion that the dog and I have made , expect to see some stirring from naptime at one of the napping locations . I look first on the living room couch . That 's spot number one for napping alone . I glance over in the evening light and don 't see him . I 'm calling him at this point . " Baby ? " I look in our bedroom , but the bed is empty . Baby ? I call again . Now I 'm starting to panic . I turn on the hall light , calling for him , " Baby ? " and I walk toward the guest bedroom . The office . We use the computer in there but the bed is really a catchall for dirty clothes and fishing gear . But I see him lying there . Relief spreads over me . Oh , there he is . Instantly , the relief is gone as I process that he hasn 't responded to me calling to him . I walk into the dark room , lit only by the hall light , and call to him again . " Baby ? " I feel his leg . Stiff . Oh , God , Baby . I say . I turn on the light and go back and look at him and realize that he 's not breathing . I run into the other room to find my purse with my phone and then I 'm that hysterical woman on the 911 call that you see on TV . I told them that I didn 't think my husband was breathing . She got my address and information , and remarkably , I knew it . She asked if I knew how to do CPR . I didn 't . She said she 'd tell me how . She asked if he was on a bed and if I thought I could move him to the floor . I didn 't think I could . Ok , we 'll just try from there . Then I lost connection with the 911 operator and had to do the whole thing over again . She starts explaining how to do cpr to me , and I start doing compressions . When I first press on his chest a breath comes out but it sounds all rattly . His eyes look like they 're wrinkled . His mouth is open and his tongue looks pruny like fingers look when they 've been in the bathtub too long . My mind already knows what my heart doesn 't believe yet . I get about 15 sets of compressions done before the paramedics get there . They were really fast . I 've watched enough ER to know to stay out of their way , so I go out in the hallway to call my dad . I can 't get service . I knock on every door to try to borrow a phone and no one is home . Finally , I get a signal and make the call to my dad . Mom is in Oklahoma City still dealing with the stuff with her dad . I tell dad what 's happened and ask him to come over . He tells me to call 911 . Yeah , dad , the paramedics are already here , I just need you to come be with me . So he 's on his way . The dog keeps going into the room , though , and I can 't go in there to get him , so I call Dani , one of my best girlfriends and also a downstairs neighbor to just come up and get Arthur . She arrives seconds later but won 't leave . She thinks she needs to just be with me . Next thing I know the paramedics are coming in and telling me that they can 't get a rhythm . They 've tried . They can take him to a hospital but it will only cost more money and they 'll tell me the same thing there that they 're telling me here . I have to ask her , " So you 're telling me that he 's dead , then . " And she says , " Yes . " I hit the floor . Aren 't they supposed to tell you that stuff sitting down ? In that moment , I felt that I saw my future . I saw myself on the lonely nights , waking up freaking out about being in bed alone . I saw myself in so much pain with arms empty of man and baby . I saw myself trying to learn to live without him and knew how long and painful the rest of my life was going to be . I knew that this was the beginning of life number two for me . That the charmed life number one was officially over . Suddenly we were in decision mode . Organs . Could they be donated if they took him to the hospital ? No , because there was never a rhythm and they don 't know what 's wrong with him . Police show up . Because of his age they want to have homicide come take a look . Ok , whatever . I think back on it later , realizing that the wife is always the first suspect and think about how weird it would have been had they actually shown up . I was such a mess . Dad shows up and he 's the first one I have to tell . I just shake my head and dad hugs me . We both just sobbed . I think it 's this point that the realization comes to me and I say it out loud … " Oh my God , dad , I 'm a widow . " And the policewoman doesn 't want to let him see the body . I was furious . It may be weird , but this is still my house and he is still my husband and if my dad wants to see him , he can . Then the phone calls . All the people that had to be called . Siblings . I sat down and made a list . I called Karen , my co - worker first . I needed her to handle stuff at the shop . I have no idea what I said to her , how coherent I was . She told me to just get off the phone and she would handle everything . Proof positive that Sawan was right . If there ever was a candidate for cloning it would be Karen . Next I called Ellie . I didn 't prep her at all , just blurted it out . She puked while I was on the phone with her . After I hung up , Dad and I talked for a minute . He gave me a little coaching on how to share that news . Next I tried Cori , but she was in England and she didn 't answer . So I called Gabe . He said he 'd start working on flights to get out there tomorrow , but we had to call the Red Cross . All kinds of hoops had to be jumped through to get special leave for military guys . Dad took care of that . Next I called Sawan 's sisters . I don 't remember whom I called first . I was so sad to have to make those phone calls . To have lost their mom so early in their lives and then to lose a brother so early in his is just more than one person should have to deal with . To have to be the bearer of that news was really , really hard . Next I tried Cori again . This time she answered . I remember this call more clearly than any of the others . I told her that she needed to prepare herself because I had some really bad news . I had come home and found Sawan not breathing , and had called 911 , but even with me doing cpr and them trying , they were unable to save him . Cori asked me , " Noey , are you saying that Sawan is dead ? " and she tells me that I just sucked in air for what seemed like an eternity , and then I said " Yes . " And she just said " Oh , baby , baby baby . " Over and over again . When I think back on that memory , I think , and she just held me . Which is impossible , because she was in England and I was in Denver , but that 's how it felt . After all the phone calls were made , Dad convinced me that I needed to come to his house to " sleep " for the night . I couldn 't leave the house in the shape that it was , with Sawan 's cereal bowls still on the coffee table and cans of half - drunk Fresca littering my living room . So I went in and stripped the bed that he had just died in . I carried the sheets straight down to the dumpster . I took a big black garbage bag and threw away all of the groceries that I had just bought him . Then I threw away all of the trash that had any marking of him on it . Dad did the dishes . I just couldn 't wash out his cereal one last time , so dad stood at the sink and sobbed as he loaded the dishwasher for me . When we finally left my condo , dad drove me to his house in his car , Arthur on my lap , shock on my face . We headed down 8th avenue , and when we turned onto York , a fox ran across the road . Dad pointed it out . My whole adult life , the fox has been a spiritual thing to me . Like a physical reminder of a spiritual presence in my life . It was God telling me , " This sucks . But I love you , and I 'm still here . I 'm for you . Don 't forget . " I 've become obsessed with this show recently and have watched every episode . It 's pretty great . Cute boys , strong women , and they always get their man . It 's all tied up in a very neat one hour episode . Lots of closure . Well , Gibbs , the main character , has these rules . I have no idea how many there are , but all of his team has to know his " rules . " They refer to them all the time , by number . The only example that I can give you is a bad one , but it 's " Never Apologize . It 's a sign of weakness . " While I don 't agree with this , it 's one of the rules that he sets out for his team to live by . I have no idea how he came up with the list , and I 'm pretty sure that the list has developed over time , and that they 're not given in order of importance . This brings me to my point . There is no widow handbook , or a handbook on how to deal with widows , or people that are grieving , for that matter . So maybe I can help you all know what is helpful by making my own " Gibb 's List " of rules , or maybe we should call them suggestions , for things that you should never say to a widow . We 're all figuring this out as we go , so this will be the first one , but it does not necessarily rank highest in order of importance . Here 's the thing : everyone has had grief in their life . We 're all on the scale . All grief and loss is important and sad . I think that it 's amazing that people want to empathize with me . I know that most of the time , people who say these things to me are trying to love me . I choose to focus on this , but this definitely takes a lot of grace . We all deal with grief in different ways , and grief is so multi - faceted , that it 's just different for everyone . Even with other widows , even young ones , our experiences are all different . Some lost their husbands to cancer , so they had time with their husbands to plan what life would be like without him , making their loss different than mine . Some had children , which for me makes me jealous , that they 'll always have a piece of him , but for them maybe has been a huge hardship . At any rate , we can 't compare grief . We can 't keep score ( because if we did , I think I obviously would win , but then , when you 're in the middle of your painful experience , you probably think that you 'll win , too , which is why I think we shouldn 't keep score ) . But we also can 't know what a person is going through , and it 's extremely painful when people tell me that they understand . Our brokenness is always lived and experienced as highly personal , intimate and unique . I am deeply convinced that each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers . No doubt , we can make comparisons ; we can talk about more or less suffering , but , in the final analysis , your pain and my pain are so deeply personal that comparing them can bring scarcely any consolation or comfort . In fact , I am more grateful for a person who can acknowledge that I am very alone in my pain than for someone who tries to tell me that there are many others who have similar or worse pain . People tell me all the time how brave I am . It actually drives me crazy because I don 't feel brave . I always thought that brave was a choice . You know , you are in a certain situation and you choose : either be chicken shit , or be brave . So what I 'm doing now , facing life , I don 't feel that I 'm being brave , but I 'm also not being chicken shit . . . so it 's just confusing . I don 't feel that I ever made the choice . Yes , this is going to be hard , but I 'm going to be brave and do it anyway . I don 't know . Maybe I need a better definition of brave . I 'd like to let that be a word that I used to describe myself . But I digress . There have been a few small , seemingly silly things that I can own that I have bravely conquered . This is something that I choose to think of as the adventure of my new life , and meditate on that , rather than thinking of these things that I have to do now and how bad life sucks . Sometimes the adventure thoughts win out . Those are the good days . I mowed the lawn . I bought a condo when I was single . This was a very intentional choice . It had a huge balcony , a pool , and someone else was responsible for snow removal . The big thing was , though , there was no lawn to mow . I had no desire to have to take care of one . I stopped living in the condo when Sawan , my husband , died , and rented a duplex with * gulp * a yard . I 'm responsible for mowing it . I dreaded it and dreaded it and finally bit the bullet and just did it . I called my dad for a refresher course , I hadn 't mowed a lawn in 15 years , give or take . Then , I went out there and mowed it . Honestly , it just wasn 't that hard . The hardest thing about it was grieving for the husband that I wished had been mowing it for me , but I can still do it . I see women mowing their yards all the time and they can 't ALL be widows . I cried a little , but at the end of my sweaty chore , I couldn 't figure out why there wasn 't a band playing or a ribbon to cross at a finish line . . . I had done it , I won ! I pulled the meat off the bones of a whole chicken . I am totally sicked out by this process . Sawan always did it for me , and somehow he always did it really cleanly and perfectly . I thought that I would never have to deal with it in my whole life . Not quite how it turned out . So anyway , I needed some chicken . I bought the rotisserie chicken from Safeway and brought it home and pulled it off as best I could . I gave myself lots of grace to throw away the stuff that I couldn 't handle , but the fact that I was doing it instead of having Sawan do it for me was a big fat deal . That chicken never tasted so good . It tasted like triumph . I replaced the handle on the toilet . Now , this is actually something that our landlord should have done , but that would be a whole other blog . At any rate , the toilet handle had gone un - fixed for way too long and I thought I could figure out how to do it , so I replaced it myself . Once again , would have loved for my handy husband to have done it , but I 'm learning that I can do things myself . And it mostly works , too , you just have to jiggle the handle after every flush to make sure it won 't run . For me , it was always a sweet , soft word . Widow was a grandma . She has gray hair and she knits . She and her husband were lifelong companions . They were married for 40 years . They had two grown children together , and several grandchildren . With her at his side , he dies peacefully of " old age . " Though she misses him terribly , she is now free to do the things that she always wanted to do , but couldn 't because she was taking care of him , and she takes trips to Europe and visits the grandkids . Wrong . The reality of the word widow for me is just so different . It never occurred to me that widows were young . I guess I knew a few , but it never changed the image for me . The word is so strong and harsh and painful . I 'm here to show you that widows come in all shapes and sizes . Some of us are cute . I 'm 31 and a half . I have blonde curly hair and a curvy figure . I 'm a little fluffy in the middle but I 'm working on it . There is nothing grandma - ish about me . . . I 'm almost a year into my journey . It 's been amazing to me all of the things that I 've learned . As an American , we have so few customs when it comes to grief . There is no structure to our grief . There is no manual for how to be a widow or how to handle one . I was thinking that I would use this to share what I 'm going through . Maybe it will be helpful to other widows and to people who know widows . Posted by I 'm 37 years old . When I think of all the words that I used to describe myself before : wife , hairstylist , business owner , and all of the words that I wanted to use to describe myself , like mommy , I never knew that the word that would define me more than any other would be so out of my control : widow . I hope to be real here about my struggles to get through it , and try to make some sense of life , and also to find some joy and humor along the way . This is the new adventure ! |
Warnings : There 's het in this story . I 'm sorry . It 's among the slashiest het I 've ever written , but it 's still het . Wesley cut through the dead demon 's skin and then put down his knife to take out the gland . He paused for a moment , turning it in his hand , studying the colours and texture . There seemed to be nothing abnormal about those things . The size was another matter entirely . It was big enough to play cricket with . " It could be a disease . " Wesley ignored the cheerful sarcasm in Gunn 's voice . " All things considered , though , I 'm more inclined to believe the source of this chemical imbalance is artificial , perhaps some sort of drug . " " I 'm not sure . " Wesley 's brow furrowed as he calculated an answer . " We 've encountered four so far , but I 'm sure that if there were many more we would have heard of it . . . " " No , I meant ' benign ' demons . " The grimace Gunn made at the word clearly suggested that he didn 't fully embrace the concept . " How many altogether ? " " Not at all . Of course , it depends on how you define your terms . A pixie , for example , might not be considered a demon by some people . Of course , I didn 't include pixies in my estimation anyway , since they are definitely not benign . In fact , they can be rather aggressive , although a pixie bite is certainly not severe enough to cause any concerns . " " We don 't , " Wesley said simply . " If these cases prove anything , it 's that you can never be certain when it comes to demons . And if they 're out there killing people , I say killing * them * is a fairly good idea . " " Yeah , well , just warn me if there 's a pixie killing spree . " There was briefly silence as Wesley continued working , but soon Gunn gave a deep sigh . " How long is that going to take you ? " The sound of a cellphone interrupted Wesley 's thoughts . He looked down at his slimy hand and grimaced . When he started working , he 'd taken off his jacket * specifically * so he wouldn 't get it all slimed up . And he wasn 't sure demon glands worked well with cell phone circuits . " Got it , " Gunn said , fishing the cell phone out of Wesley 's jacket . " Yeah , what is it ? " he asked the caller . " Do I sound like Wesley ? He 's a bit busy right now . Yeah ? What did he do ? Okay , fine , what do they think he did ? Really ? Uh - huh . Uh - huh . Yeah , I 'll tell him . No , it won 't take long . Okay . Take care . " Wesley stopped working and looked with interest at Gunn , who turned off the phone and carefully replaced it in the jacket pocket . There weren 't all that many people who had reason to call him , and " take care " limited the range even more . " Anne ? " " Yeah . " Gunn scratched his neck . " One of the kids got arrested . Boy named Li ? Seems someone knocked over a convenience store last night , and the cops picked him up this morning . She wants you to talk to the lawyers . " Wesley stood up slowly and almost wiped his hand off on his jeans before he stopped himself . " Of course . But why doesn 't she do it herself ? " Wesley stepped into the police station and spotted the lawyer right away as the only one wearing a suit , and a remarkably classy one at that . He got a glimpse of himself in a reflecting window and blinked at the difference . A green sweater currently well earning its name with its left sleeve pinned up , jeans stiff with demon grime , second - hand leather boots with copper buckles . At least the jacket still looked new . The man 's voice , familiar from a few times when he 'd answered the phone at the shelther , told him he 'd guessed right . He reached out his hand . " Hello , Mr . McDonald . " Lindsey McDonald was younger than he 'd have expected , and his smile was wide and casual , showing no surprise at Wesley 's appearance . They found a small waiting room , with sunken , worn armchairs and a strange smell but at the very least empty , and sat down . Wesley was the first one to speak . Wesley slowly sank to a chair . " Oh , dear . " Although he didn 't think Li capable even of robbery , much less murder , the situation was grave whether he was guilty or not . " On what ground was Li arrested ? " " There 's an assisting clerk , " Lindsey said . " He was outside when he heard the gunfire , so he went in to see what was going on . According to his testimony , he saw a ' Jap boy ' in black clothes jump out a window . The window was open already , but it 's pretty high up . It would take some agility . " " Which Chen Li doubtlessly has . " Li was Chinese , not Japanese , but it was quite likely that the clerk couldn 't tell the difference . " Is that all they have on him ? " Lindsey made a see - saw motion with his hand . " They did a line - up , but didn 't get anything definite , although he was one of the guys the clerk thought it might be . So the evidence isn 't overwhelming , but then , neither is his alibi . " A demon brothel was probably the worst alibi you could have , and Wesley was fairly certain that Li wouldn 't try and use it . And , obviously , any false alibi would be a bad one if made in the spur of a moment . " What did he say ? " They exchanged glances , and Wesley knew his suspicion had been correct . That didn 't exactly ease his mind . Not everyone who knew about demons had a healthy attitude about them - and in this case , he wasn 't even sure what a healthy attitude * was * . A policewoman walked past the room , and the two men leaned closer to keep the conversation low . " What if he was provided with another alibi ? " Wesley threw a quick glance at the observation window to see if the policewoman had left . She had , but thinking about her made him half remember something that he had a feeling was important . He frowned . " He said he was with a woman . Why would he lie unless the truth was worse ? " Lindsey 's face and voice were both quite serious , but Wesley still felt as if he 'd just been exposed to an embarrassing prank . He fought very hard to resist that feeling and the stiffness that went with it . The man had a point . He 'd need a better story than that , and for a moment he toyed with the idea of providing Li with a woman . He quickly dismissed it . The only woman among his close acquaintances who might sleep with a teenager for reasons beside money was Alonna , and he could just imagine the look on her face if he were to ask her . No , that alibi had to go . If a new one was to be provided , it might as well be by Wesley . All he needed was a good reason for Li to lie . " All right , then , " Lindsey finally said , grabbing his notebook . " He helped you out and neither of you told anyone . Fair enough . But lying about it to the police ? " " I 'm glad that 's settled , then , " he said , grateful for the opportunity to rise from the seedy chair . It struck him that he 'd have to go clean his floor , and fast , before anyone checked his story . The dread at the thought made his head spin . Just pulling the bed out would be . . . Asking for help was out of the question . Whatever he had told Lindsey , he would never submit himself to that sort of humiliation willingly . Doing it himself was quite embarrassing enough . " Shall I tell this to the police ? " On the way out of the police station , Wesley suddenly remembered where he 'd seen that policewoman , and he turned around so quickly he got bumped by the door . Oblivious to the smart of a new bruise , he hurried back inside , ready to look through every corridor and office he had to until he found her . Fortunately , he didn 't have to . She was leaving her office just as he rounded the corner , and he dashed over before she could close the door . " Please , " he said , not certain why it mattered so much to him . He wouldn 't have thought that he 'd ever want to meet anyone from Sunnydale again , not after he 'd made such a fool of himself there . But for some reason , knowing that Angel was in Los Angeles and * not * meeting him was worse . The thought of perhaps one day bumping into him on a mission or by the shelter , old life meeting new in a manner that could only be humiliating - no . Better to take the bull by its horns . " I really do need to find him . " She looked at him for a moment in silence , her light eyes full of suspicion . Then she sighed and let the door fall shut . " Can we take this outside ? " He followed her outside until she halted on the sidewalk and spun around to face him . The sun stung his eyes and he brought up his hand to shade them . It certainly wasn 't privacy she wanted , since the street was full of people . " I don 't know who you are , " she said , " and I don 't care . But I do know that Angel is trouble , and I don 't want you to * ever * mention him to my face again . Is that clear ? " She was ready to step inside again , but he hurried past her , standing in front of the already opened door . " Will you tell him I came looking for him next time you see him ? My name is Wesley Wyndham - Pryce . " Angel shook his head at Darla , who stood in front of the door in her red dress and with the half - drained body of a coach driver in her arms . He remembered that coach driver . Of course he did . He remembered everyone . " Not now . I need to explain to Kate . " He clung to the one thing he knew . " I need to explain to Kate . Kate . . . Kate has to understand . It 's important . It 's important I explain to her . " " Of course I will . " Then there was no more Darla , and Angel knew that Doyle would keep his promise . He was reliable that way . If the others were stronger than him , he 'd say so , not pretend just to calm Angel down . " Kate , please talk to me . " He took a few steps closer , encouraged by a green - eyed wink from across the room . " I tried to help him . If he 'd only let me in . . . " " No ! " The denial came out fierce . At times the thought of Darla alone was enough to bring her out , and he worried that it would happen this time - but it didn 't . He sighed with relief . " She 's not here . Didn 't hear us . " Kate gave a snort that was anything but happy . " Angel , listen to yourself ! Or better yet , listen to me . You have to go see a shrink or something . " " Yeah , he did , but I can 't remember . William ? Warren ? Something like that , and then a thirty - character surname with a hyphen in it . Young guy , glasses . And human , I checked on that . " The description still didn 't tell him anything , although " glasses " and " British " left enough connotations in his brain to suspect that perhaps the council of Watchers were onto him . He had no idea why they would bother , though . He hadn 't killed anyone , and he had no intentions of getting back together with Buffy . Most of the time he was fighting demons on the street or in his head - and if the latter had increased lately , that wasn 't exactly something the Council would know . She didn 't respond to that , even with ' you 're welcome ' , and there was an awkward moment when they stood silently on opposite sides of her busy desk , watching each other . There were lines in her face that hadn 't been there when they met , signs of aging that he regretted giving to her , and yet he envied her all the same . Living wasn 't easy , he knew that much , but it was better . It had to be . " Go see a shrink , " she said , her voice harsh and tired . " Or a witch . Or anyone , as long as it 's someone . " Wesley walked slowly across the main rooms of the shelter , looking for Anne . He was aching all over . His apprehension concerning the problem of the furniture had proven quite correct . Stepping into Anne 's office , he soon forgot most of his pains . Anne was sitting in her office chair , which wasn 't entirely expected on a Tuesday afternoon , whn she usually had work to do elsewhere . But more importantly , Gunn was sitting on the bed with Wesley 's jacket across his lap , and that wasn 't expected at all . " I had some business to take care of . " He tore his eyes from Gunn and found Anne 's looking rather too innocent . " I told you that on the phone . " Damn the woman , she was having too much fun with this . And he was too tired to be bothered . He sank down on a chair . " I hope Li is all right ? " " He 's fine . You just missed him . " Anne rose . " Well , Gunn , since you 've got your company and it seems I 'm not getting any work done in here , I 'm gonna return to the living room . Wes , if you feel up to clocking in later , that would be appreciated . " For some reason , that caused Gunn to glare at her , and she held up her hands in a ' don 't shoot me ' gesture as she backed out from the office . Wesley turned to Gunn , puzzled , but certain an explanation would come soon . Instead , he got a glare rather similar to the one Anne had received . " You went directly from work to demon hunting last night , right ? " Gunn stood up in a swift , nearly hostile motion . " You don 't need to answer that , because I know you did . And then this morning you head out to save some punk from prison , and when you finally go * home * you sure don 't * sleep * , because quite frankly you look like hell . In fact , if I 'm to make an educated guess - and I may not have your level of education , but I 'm allowed to make those - I 'd say you 've been taking care of that alibi you gave the kid . Pushing about furniture and who knows what . Am I right ? " " Well , yes . " Having Gunn towering over him like this was highly unpleasant , but he didn 't have the energy to stand right now . " I fail to see what . . . " Wesley barely had time to catch his jacket before it hit him in the face . He adverted the attack and stared at Gunn in shock . " What are you doing ? " Both parts lost to practicality . " I need the money . " He didn 't elaborate his answer to include the demon hunting , because Gunn knew as well as he did that it was something he simply couldn 't give up . Logic made no difference in the middle of the night . He 'd been unemployed and broke once and dreaded going there again , handicapped and thus even less likely to get employed . It wasn 't as if he was hoarding , just making sure to stay head over water and able to pay his bills even if something unexpected came up . A hospital bill , for example . Lord knew that he 'd been inviting them lately . He 'd been able to get a good place and lose some debts with the money from the motorcycle . One day would make very little difference in his ability to pay the rent . But he couldn 't bring himself to be idle . " Forget it , " Gunn said , heading for the door . Surely he wasn 't leaving already ? Wesley shifted in his chair , ready to get up and stop him , but Gunn waved impatiently for him to stay . " Stay where you are . I 'll be back in a minute . " " You 're just not taking anyone 's advice , are you ? " he asked , but his voice wasn 't as harsh as before . On the contrary , he sounded cheerful . " She told you to do it . That makes it work , and work you should be paid for . " Gunn shrugged . " I know it 's not the same as a full day , but it 's something . Go home and rest . " " You won 't . I 'll take your shift . " Gunn grinned , presumably at Wesley 's expression , which he was much too stunned to keep in control . " What ? It 's not exactly brain surgery . " " Sure I should . " Gunn 's voice was softer than he 'd ever heard it , so soft it made his treacherous heart skip a beat . " You 're one of mine now , remember ? " He didn 't really want to approach Gunn like that . He wanted Gunn to approach * him * like that . But even in his fantasies , he couldn 't bring himself so far from reality . He 'd never been very imaginative . If Gunn had just shrugged the thanks off , like a normal person , there could have been some hope for Wesley 's mind to keep his heart together , but these impolite , eager words were too much for him . He mumbled a goodbye and headed out , knowing he had to do something about this foolish crush and do it soon . Things just couldn 't be allowed to continue like this . " I 'm family , stupid , " she said , leaning close to him . " Family doesn 't leave . Not ever . Isn 't that right , sweetheart ? " " You bitch ! " He caught her by the throat , pushing her up against the wall , and then blinked as her face turned into that of a young man . He let go , slowly , trying to figure out if this was real . He had a feeling that it was , that they had been talking - but about what ? The man was badly beaten . Had he done that ? " No - don 't be . That was brilliant . That 's exactly what I 'm talking about . You 'll find my brother in no time . " " Listen , " said the guy , backing off a few steps , though he didn 't seem afraid . " I 'll leave if you want me to , but I really want to find my brother . He 's in trouble , I know it . " " Don 't you understand ? " Angel was getting desperate . Kathy was making cheeky faces at him , like she used to when she was alive , and he couldn 't deal with that and the stranger at the same time . It was too much . All he wanted was some peace and quiet . " I 'm dangerous . " " I should hope you are . " The guy sat down on the desk , right next to Darla . Angel started forward to stop him - did he have a deathwish or something ? But of course , Darla wasn 't real . Angel knew she wasn 't . " This isn 't humans we 're dealing with . I 'm need someone dangerous . " Angel stared at Kathy , who was reaching her arms out for her new foster - mommy , eager to be lifted up . He watched Darla drinking from her , taking deep gulps with great satisfaction . That had never happened . And still . . . " God , yes . " The answer came without thought , but he watched the vampires - his family - and made up his mind . " Yes . All right . I 'll find your brother . " Wesley spiked the fourth onion , peeled it , and was about to start slicing it when the door slammed behind him . He managed to control his urge to jump , and turned around slowly to face Li . If it had been anyone else , they might have received a lecture , but considering the troubles the boy had gone through lately , Wesley decided to go easy on him . The boy jumped to it , clearly relieved to have something at hand . Wesley understood . All things considered , Li wasn 't a bad kid , but he was an impudent one , and they hadn 't always gotten along . The idea of being beholden must be as embarrassing for both of them . Wesley contemplated how to answer . Definitely not with that impersonal ' you 're welcome ' or , even worse , ' it 's nothing ' . This wasn 't something he could brush off . " It was the only thing I could do . " Wesley was about to say ' of course not ' again , but then the penny finally dropped . Li had been arrested for a crime he hadn 't committed . He wasn 't consciously trying to convince Wesley of something they both already knew . This was about policemen scaring half to death a kid who was already wary , for good reasons , of authority . By refusing to believe him , by putting him in a situation where the truth was impossible and a lie would send him to prison or worse . " Those policemen weren 't interested in the truth , Li . They had a horrible crime on their hands and wanted someone to blame for it . You were convenient because you have a record and no family , but the case was * incredibly * weak . All they had on you was your agility and your Asian descent , and judging from the line - up results , they weren 't even clear on what kind of Asian . " " Hawaiian , " Wesley repeated . He didn 't understand some people . Surely it couldn 't be harder to tell someone Hawaiian from someone Chinese than it was to tell a Kailiff demon from a Lasovic . " Good Lord . Well , that certainly proves my point . They were sloppy and uninterested , and you were convenient . That 's all . " " They believed you . " It was an accusation , although not necessarily directed at him . " That was a pretty dumb story you came up with , but they never questioned it . Cause you 're white and old and talk fancy . " " You forgot this , " Wesley said with more than a hint of cynicism , gesturing at his missing arm . If Li wanted to turn this into a time for bitterness and self - pity , he might as well join in . " I think it helped quite a bit . " He noticed , quite amused , that Li was blushing . So he 'd won the ' poor me ' contest , without even putting in any honest effort . He 'd used natural embarrassment to his advantage and to the boy 's , and he was more proud than sad about it . Whatever he 'd expected a demon brothel to be , it wasn 't this business - like decadence . The interior decorating clashed terribly with a number of interspecial couples enjoying each other 's company in the lobby . Wesley sincerely hoped he wasn 't supposed to perform in public the way these people did . " Good . It would have been bad for business if the kid told the truth - there 's always a risk someone would believe him enough to check us out . It was a good thing our lawyers promised to nip it in the bud . " " Lawyers ? " Wesley asked , his head starting to snap the pieces of the puzzle together even before she mentioned the firm 's name . So it wasn 't pure altruism that had sent Lindsey McDonald to Li 's rescue . He listened with half an ear to Madame Dorian 's rant about how discretion was vital to her clientele , still thinking about other matters . His mind went immediately to Gunn , and he pushed the thought away . " A woman . Not too young . Fair , short , perhaps a bit chubby , long hair . . . on her head , I mean , " he added when he recalled what this place was . Elsa lift up her long hair with one hand and the dress with another and spun around . Wesley blinked at the sight of the large hollow lined with tree bark that went from her shoulder blades to the spot where the tail started . Scandinavian wood sprite , his mind told him , but certainly the illustrations in handbooks on folklore and mythology weren 't anything like seeing the real thing . As Elsa spun around again , he noticed that her bosom didn 't heave . She wasn 't breathing . Wesley wasn 't entirely pleased to see Madame Dorian leave . He fully agreed that she had to , but it made the situation a little too pressing . Elsa gave him a roguish grin of a kind he 'd interpret as friendly if he saw it at the shelter . Here , he wasn 't so sure . " Do you want to proceed in here or should we find a room ? " she asked . She had a surprisingly deep voice for a woman so short - how could she talk at all if she wasn 't breathing ? - and a heavy accent . Vocally , she resembled a less serene version of Greta Garbo in Ninotchka . " Come on , then . " She jerked her head to show the way , and proceeded to a door , through a corridor , past another door , all the time swaying her generously shaped hips in a highly distracting manner . Wesley tried not to look , but felt ridiculous when he caught himself . She was a half - naked prostitute , he was * supposed * to stare at her . Even the way her tail moved was erotic , and Good Lord , that was just a little too close to bestiality for his liking . " Here we are , " she said , stepping into yet another room . He could see a king - sized bed covered in wine red sheets , but very little else , since she turned around in the door , preventing him from going inside . " So . Wesley Wyn . . . ah . . . " " Lovely ! " The grin she gave him this time * definitely * didn 't fit a woman of her age . Whatever her age was . He had a suspicion she might be significantly over forty . " Now , let 's have sex . " Before he could react , she had pulled him into the room and started unbuttoning his shirt . When she moved on to his pants , he 'd collected himself enough to put his hand protectively over the button . " D - don 't you think you 're being a bit forward ? " " You like me forward , " she assured him , pushing his hand aside to get those pants off . He didn 't move his feet and she put her hands on his shoulders , prepared to push him . To save himself from the humiliation , he sat down on the bed , and she took off his boots and trousers before jumping up on top of him . In spite of her weight , she didn 't harm him in the process . It was surely quite sexy , if one could ignore that he was ridiculously self - conscious of his socks . They were still on , but one of them had slid off halfway and distracted his attention . He let his eyes drift , pretending that he wasn 't embarrassed . It was a remarkably nice room , with a dressing table that looked Edwardian , quite a few potted plants - and a stone statue of two rabbits in the middle of an intimate act which broke the impression of class quite abruptly . Elsa was now kissing the spot where his earlobe met his jaw , something he 'd long since discovered he found intensely enjoyable . Funny that she 'd choose that spot first of all . In his dreams , it had been Gunn doing exactly the same thing . If that was the case , she probably couldn 't help it , and chastising her for it would be pointless . So instead , he let his hand slide up against her back , touching that bark - lined hollow . He was here for the sex , after all , he might as well enjoy himself . She laughed softly as he stroked his fingers along the edge of the hollow . There were no lungs , and yet he heard the sound . " How do you talk ? " Maybe she was right , but he couldn 't give up his thoughts , not even when she guided his cock between her legs . His eyes fell on the rabbit sculpture . It was remarkably lifelike . Almost too lifelike . The moment seemed to last forever . This was much more than simple relief , this was his lust drawn from him with force , a mix of pleasure and pain that was too strong for him to stand . He wasn 't aware of anything around him anymore , just the feeling that kept going , spreading through him , changing him . His body felt very far away , and yet he could feel with perfect clarity that it was twisting and turning to eventually , when he returned to it , become something else entirely . He didn 't know how , with the muscles involved in his doing so so very distant , but somehow he managed to obey . Soon he lay on the king size bed , gasping for breath , but still alive , thank God . Elsa hadn 't killed him after all . She was sitting on the edge of the bed , glowing . He blinked . Yes . She was glowing . And she looked several years younger than before . He turned his head to the sculpture . It was two actual rabbits , caught in the act . " This is . . . " He was much too tired to speak , but tried anyway . " This is where you would kill me , correct ? " " Oh , I 'm not allowed to do that here . " She gave him a brief smile and moved to a dressing table , where she proceeded to brush her hair . Her eyes were still watching him in the mirror . " Actually , I thought you 'd make quite a nice juniper , " she said , stopping the swift motions of the brush while she was thinking . The glow was starting to disappear , but she still looked younger than before the sex . " Prickly if you get too close , but with a nice smell . " She started to brush again , with long , energetic strokes . " In any case , you promised not to harm the forest . I can 't kill you after that . " He lay silently for a while , watching her . Demon sex had been quite different from what he had expected , and the thought of what she could have done to him was highly unpleasant , but at the very least it seemed to have worked . His body felt heavy and dull , but the ache in his chest and behind his eyes wasn 't there anymore . The thoughts of Gunn were easier on him now , the disbelieving joy of knowing something wonderful , not the painful frustration of having it one step removed at all time . " Not more ? " It seemed to surprise her , and she touched the skin near her mouth and eyes tentatively . " So strong in only six months - is it more than lust , then ? " She turned to look straight at him , instead of into the mirror , but he didn 't answer . Didn 't know how to answer without bringing that ache back . Yes , Wesley old boy , he thought , you 've fallen hard this time . More than lust , I 'd say . He felt an unexpected relief that she gave up interest so quickly . Very clearly , her main focus was herself , and yet she seemed to be so closely connected to the forest that he 'd have to become its protector before he could sleep with her . Highly interesting . She took a lipstick from the table and began applying it while she spoke , without ever missing her lips . The skill certain women had with make - up was fascinating . " Do I look picky to you ? I 'm not picky . They do what they promised , and I 'm happy . " She chortled . " Now , I had a sister who was very picky . She once seduced two men at once , only one of them was short and the other was tall , and that drove her crazy . She made the short one 's head lie next to the tall one 's , but then of course the feet didn 't match , and when the feet matched the heads didn 't . So finally she went to fetch an axe to chop off . . . " Her voice trailed off and for the first time she looked uncertain . " Sorry . " " It 's quite all right , " he said , trying to find his pants . He wasn 't too pleased with her sudden sympathy , particularly since it didn 't stop her from staring at his attempts to get dressed . Besides , he was interested in her story , whatever her sister had decided to chop off . " So what happened ? " Wesley laughed . He had a feeling he might be coming back to this place just to take notes , even if the ache stayed away and he could look at Gunn without going crazy . Getting off the bed , he found his pants by the foot end , partly under it . Bugger , they were getting filthy . Wesley had to bite his lip to stop his chin from falling down at the stupid question . " No . No , I 'm not . I generally like to wear trousers and boots . " His cheeks heated . The suggestion in itself was bad enough , but the way she said it . . . still , he was reasonably sure she meant no harm . " I 'd * really * prefer it if you didn 't . Why don 't you . . . put on some make - up , or something . Make yourself pretty . " Offensive or not , it didn 't seem to have meant much to her ; she was already preoccupied with a new - looking Cosmopolitan magazine . " Besides , I already made myself pretty . With you . " The unexpected sarcasm caused him to chuckle , and he was still chuckling when he 'd gotten the rest of his clothes on and headed out of the room . Not until he was waiting for the receptionist to give him his change did the mirth die away , as his eyes fell on a large poster behind her desk . ' ANGEL ' , in eight inch letters . He moved closer , ignoring the receptionist 's protests that he should stay on the other side of the desk . ' Fight Club ' the poster said . ' Introducing Angel the Mad Dog Vampire ' . Mad dog ? What on earth was going on ? He let his eyes drift further down , finding the words ' sponsored by Madame Dorian 's House of Pleasures ' . |
Addy is growing , as usual . She now has both bottom teeth , and enjoys cereal and a jar of 1st food twice a day . She is also starting to enjoy more snacks , like rice puffs and graham crackers . Developmentally , not too much has changed . She is perfecting all her current skills , and is working hard at it . She loves to study things , and her attention span is getting longer all the time . She enjoys being carried around stores now , instead of sitting in her carseat . She 's such a big girl ! I found a belt for my pants . . . . Yesterday , Addy and I relaxed and played games during the day . Then in the afternoon , we went to her GI doctor . She is 15 lbs , 4 oz , perfect for a " dainty girl " as the doctor called her . She said she is doing great . We can try to take her off her medicine again in 2 months , and as long as she is fine without it by a year old , we don 't need to go back anymore . Yea ! After the doctors appt , we hung out with daddy , and then I went to my Bunco Christmas party . We had a rob your neighbor gift exchange , and then had a cookie exchange . I had a lot of fun hanging out with the neighbor girls : ) And Josh was really excited when I brought home all my goodies ! For your Harry Potter watching pleasure , magical Addy : http : / / www . youtube . com / watch ? v = g4 - G2fsPP2YToday , Addy and I celebrated her 8 mo . birthday . Ok , not really . . . Josh worked from home today , so Addy got to play with both of us on and off all day . We went to Lowe 's and got a snow saucer , for someday when we have enough snow to use it . Other than that , we did a lot of laundry and baking . Addy even helped a little with both , in that she played by herself in the room with me while I did some laundry and some of the baking . She wasn 't in the mood to nap today - all of her naps were shorter than an hour . Hopefully tomorrow goes a little better . Yesterday , Addy decided that 5 : 45 was a good time to wake up . That 's just craziness . So we fed her , played for a little bit , then all took a 2 hour nap until almost 9 . Then I made lots of monster cookies , yum : ) Then after more playtime , we went to downtown St . Charles for their Christmas traditions celebrations . There are lots of dressed up actors playing Christmas characters . There are Santas from all over the world , the Nutcracker musical people , carolers , even Jack Frost ! After that , we all came home to warm up , and we finished wrapping most of our Christmas presents . This is Addy 's newest trick . She started it when we visited my friends at work . Everyone was laughing and doing it with her , so she 's been doing it ever since . I guess the world looks cooler from the side : ) Today , we went to the Children 's service at church . Addy was in a great mood and really enjoyed making everyone around us smile . She also enjoyed watching all the kids sing songs . After church , we delivered a meal to a family from Little Lambs who just had a baby . We brought them all the fixings for tacos , so that they can have a home cooked meal easily . Then we went to buy Josh 's manager 's Christmas present and had some lunch . We came home , watched a movie , built a successful fire , and relaxed . What a fun last weekend before Christmas ! Today , Addy and I went to Little Lambs . There were a lot of kids there , and Addy was being a little cranky . We had to leave the noisy room for a little bit while everyone was playing ! We talked about birthdays , and all the kids decorated the room for Christmas . Addy took a piece of streamer , but then just tore it apart instead of hanging it on the wall . It was more confetti than decoration : ) After coming home and having a nap , we went to Bass Pro , where we were able to get another free picture with Santa . She didn 't cry , but she did look uncomfortable . After that , we played until it was time for bed . We did have a funny poop accident today though . I was changing Addy 's diaper this afternoon , and I tried to move it out from under her . As I did so , the solid contents of the diaper rolled right out and onto the changing table . Oops ! ! Addy is also starting to wave . She started doing it earlier this week , but I wasn 't sure if it was a wave , or if it was her getting mad . But she did it today , as we left little lambs , and then again to the baby in the mirror . So I got a little video of it , for your viewing pleasure ; ) http : / / www . youtube . com / watch ? v = teZa0 __ byo0 Monday , Addy and I ventured out in the freezing cold . The real temp was in the single digits , so we only went to 2 stores , real quick . I carried Addy into the first store , but she got mad when I tried to wrap a blanket around her . So I took it off , and she got mad when the wind started to blow . So we just went quickly ; ) The rest of the day was pretty normal . I attempted to skip her medicine in the afternoon , to see if she still needed it . Then the night . . . wow . . . she was up crying for 2 hours after she went to bed . Tuesday , Addy and I went to the mall , at 11 . Who would have thought it would be so busy ? ! Then we went to my old work to drop off a few things and visit . Then we skyped with grandma and grandpa Badenhop until daddy got home . I gave Addy her medicine , as usual , and she went to bed like normal , so we figured we were all set . Yesterday , we got Addy 's second flu shot and went out to lunch with daddy . Then we went to Sam 's Club , which , as every other store we 've been to , was very busy . Then we spent another hour trying to get her to go to sleep after we put her in bed . Today , we went to the grocery store , and then over to the mall and Baby 's R Us . We have all our Christmas presents bought ! ! ! Yippee ! ! Last night we started to get freezing rain . This morning , I realized how much I don 't like our driveway . Addy and I ended up sideways on it , with the trunk of the car almost into the mailbox . So during her naps , I spent most of the time scraping ice and putting down salt . Not what I was planning , that 's for sure ! Tonight , Addy was up for a little under an hour again . Hopefully this is just a phase . . . uggh . But I hope that explains why I haven 't had a chance to write much this week : ) BFFs ! Friday , Addy and I went to Sam 's Club and the Dollar Store . Since they were both short trips , I carried her into both stores . She really enjoyed it : ) At Sam 's , she wouldn 't smile at anyone , and it was almost funny , because it almost looked like she was doing it on purpose . She would just stare at the person trying to make her smile . Then at the dollar store , she smiled at just about everyone . After a playful afternoon , Addy had her first non - family babysitter . Other than her tooth pain , it sounded like she did pretty well . Barbara , the babysitter , only had about 20 min with her awake , and a few hours while she slept - easiest babysitting gig ever ! Josh and I went to his office 's Christmas party , and then , since there wasn 't enough food , we went to Steak N ' Shake for fries and milkshakes . Yummy ! Sleepy baby . . . Saturday we spent the morning getting ready for the afternoon . We had a cookie decorating party with Addy 's friends . We ate pizza , decorated sugar cookies , watched Christmas movies and played games . Tons of fun ! SNOW ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Today we woke up to beautiful snow . But it was much better to look at than be in , since the wind was blowing so much , and it was COLD ! We continued with our plan for the day though , IHOP for breakfast and then off to church . Today 's church service was fine , it was the discovery afterward that was so shocking . I guess Addy doesn 't want any presents from Santa , because she committed the first crime of her short little life . As Josh was buckling her in to head home from church , we discovered that she had stolen a spoon from IHOP ! ! ! ! We spent the rest of the day cuddled up in the house . Toby decided to show daddy that he wanted to go on the next hunting trip . His outdoor crate is sitting on our patio right now , with the door slightly open , just in case he ever wants to go in . We let Toby out to play in the snow , and after a little while , we heard him barking like crazy . Josh went out to check on him , and he was barking at a dove he had trapped inside the crate . We finally got Toby inside the Posted by " Is my two front teeth ! " Well , we are pretty sure Addy is working on her next two teeth ! We 've got extra drooling , a little extra fussiness , wanting her pacifier more , and messier than normal poos . I can 't feel anything yet in her gums yet , but it has been about a month since her first tooth started coming through . There are only 2 years she can truly sing that song , and this is one of them ! ! This morning , Addy was a little cranky . She didn 't want to take her first nap , but when she did wake up from it , she didn 't even want to go to daddy . She cuddled up against me and hid her face . Once she got her breakfast , she was fine though . She was very talkative again today , even while shopping through Walmart . The extra exciting thing was she rode in her car seat for 2 stores ! It was awesome . She took a very short afternoon nap , so she was cranky for most of the evening , but still talkative : ) She also has started putting her thumb in her mouth . . . . I don 't approve ; ) Josh got his new phone today , a fancy new blackberry , but it looks much the same as his old one . Hopefully now we can hear him better though ! Yesterday , Addy and I went to the grocery store . She has decided that she can 't even sit in her car seat for her favorite store anymore . It sure is hard to steer a cart one - handed ! In the evening , I went to Advent by Candlelight at church . There were over 200 ladies in the fellowship hall for dessert , a speaker and singing Christmas Carols . It was pretty good , a little strange for me though , because I was sitting at a table with a bunch of people who were all related ! Today , Addy was a really good baby . She was in a good mood most of the day , and she was the most talkative that I 've seen her . That 's how I was able to snap this picture today , clearly showing her 2 little teeth ! She looks mad , but that 's how she talks : ) We did a little shopping , which of course , I had to take her out of her seat again . We did a lot of cleaning today too , and we have almost finished putting up all the Christmas decorations , finally ! " Mommy , we wanna go outside ! " Today , we spent all day inside . Addy ate up her squash this morning and was in a pretty good mood most of the day . Daddy came home at lunchtime , so that was fun : ) Then I finished putting up the lights outside . Addy ate a whole jar of pears for dinner , which I didn 't even think she liked . It 's official , she will eat any of the foods that she has tried . Some of them need to be mixed with another food , but she will eat everything now . We also celebrated daddy 's childhood tradition of St . Nick 's Day . While we were playing this evening , the doorbell rang , and we heard sleigh bells . We then discovered paper sacks with our names on them on the doorstep , and treats inside ! What a fun night ! Hanging up her first Christmas ornament ! Saturday , we picked out Addy 's first Christmas tree . It is gorgeous . She even helped put the decorations up . Josh and I also worked outside , getting things ready for winter . Of course , it was a freezing cold , windy day , but we survived . Even Josh , who was swinging an axe to chop up our firewood didn 't hurt himself : ) Addy also tried peas mixed with carrots , and she enjoyed them . Yea - we can get her to eat her green veggies now ! Writing her letter to SantaToday , we went to church and Panera with no incidents ! After coming home for a quick Addy nap , we went to Sit with Santa , thrown by our real estate agent . Addy had her first seat on Santa 's lap ! She did pretty well - at first she stared at him , then looked for us , then looked at him , then got upset . Super cute : ) Then we came home and put up about half of our outdoor Christmas lights . It was brrrrrrrrrrrrr cold ! But they look good ! Then we decided to go to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the 2nd half of the Colts game , since the Rams were on here , instead of our game . Addy did good for a little while , then the Rams started doing well , it got really loud , and she got VERY upset . Anytime the bar area , which was near where we were , erupted , Addy started screaming . So , I guess we can 't do that again , at least anytime soon . Then we got home and were able to watch overtime , during which Addy was slaphappy , and it was really fun to watch . What a fun day ! Today at Little Lambs , we talked about Christmas decorations . Addy was really into the dancing that was with one of the songs . We also did painting with red and green pudding , which she really enjoyed ! When we got home , the lawn guys were back , fixing our landslide . Later , we were hanging out on the bed , and Addy was laying down . Toby came up and cuddled up next to her , so that his head and neck were around her head - adorable : ) Then in the evening , I had a girls night out with some friends from work . We were celebrating our other work friend 's 40th birthday . Sometimes I miss work and hanging out with them , but then they start talking about work , and I don 't miss it anymore ! Today , Addy and I went shopping for the first time since we 've been back from break . Now I remember why I really wanted to finish shopping BEFORE Thanksgiving . Tons more people , tons more kiosks with people trying to attack you , and longer lines when Addy 's about to have a meltdown . We did ok today , but hopefully we can finish soon . I don 't know where we are going to take our December walks though : ( Maybe we 'll just stroll the grocery store aisles . Our adorable little girl is definitely becoming a mommy 's girl now . The past few days especially , she 'll be sitting on the floor , just playing with her toys , and she 'll turn , look at me and put her arms up . Apparently right behind her is not close enough . Then at the store today , while we were in line , she was smiling at some people behind us , which is usual ( I was holding her ) , but when they started talking to us , she put her head on my shoulder , like a shy little girl . So sweet : ) What is not so sweet however , is her new habit . She is back to peeing in the bath water . I 've tried running water over her feet in the sink , I 've tried just standing her in the water with her diaper still on . She decides to pee either once I 've laid her down on her cushion thing , or halfway through her bath . Aahh ! But , one other really cute thing . Whenever we are in her room lately , she always wants to stare at the picture great aunt Nancy made for her . It 's really cute . I tell her what the animals are , and she studies the picture , like she 's trying to remember what I 'm telling her - soo cute ! What a busy holiday weekend . I think Addy enjoyed her first Thanksgiving ! Tuesday was mommy 's birthday , and Addy took me out to breakfast at McDonalds . Delicious : ) Then we hung out all day , and picked up dinner at Bandana 's BBQ . Just after Addy went to bed , Daddy and Grandad came home from their hunting trip . We had angel food cake and went to bed . Wednesday , we went to breakfast with Grandad , and everyone just loved seeing Addy . She was the hit of the diner . Then the boys and Addy went to Cabela 's , and then we drove all the way to Fort Wayne . Thursday was Addy 's first Thanksgiving . She got her first taste of white potatoes , and she did seem to enjoy them . She got to see all her aunts and grandparents , plus some bonus family members . A very good 1st Thanksgiving for sure ! Friday , Addy wrote her first text message on Ryan 's phone : Ppoo . Definitely a Gentry : ) Then grandma and aunt Sarah babysat while mommy and daddy went to see Harry Potter , and then out to dinner with the Gentry family . Saturday was a day spent watching football . We also noticed for the first time that Addy 's second bottom tooth is coming in ! Sunday we went to visit Great - Grandma Mina in Kokomo on our way out of town . A long drive , especially since the Colts lost so horribly . Monday , Addy had her first taste of peaches . She likes them already ! We unpacked , did lots of laundry and relaxed after all the driving . It 's official - Addy can stay up in a crawling position for a few seconds , though she doesn 't know what to do there , and it 's pretty funny to watch : ) Tuesday , we went to the grocery store . I also decided to try green beans with Addy again , this time mixed with sweet potatoes . She didn 't mind them at all . I tried giving her some green beans by themselves , and she 's still a little hesitant , but not disgusted . Mommy is though - they smell horrible . Today was another relaxing day . We have about half of our Christmas decorations up , and some of the Christmas presents wrapped . I also had a little time to do this : http : / / elfyourself . jibjab . com / view / Xwr9xgrPosted by Addy in her first Jingle Bell Run ! Today was a busy day . Addy tried to wake up really early , but I kept putting in her snooze button ( pacifier ) to get her to sleep a little longer . After breakfast and naps , we went to my old work to visit everyone . After that , we went out to JJ Twigs , a delicious pizza place with two good friends from work . There 's been a lot of turnover at the company , which pretty much shows nothing 's changed ! After that , we ran a few errands on that side of town , and then came home . I 've been doing laundry and dishes and cleaning the house since . And we finally had a 20 min thunderstorm with this magical thing called rain ! Finally , I didn 't have to water this evening - soooo excited . I also want to mention - - I wish I could have been on one of Oprah 's Favorite Things shows ! ! ! I 'm so sad they are over ! Addy just keeps growing . Her little belly gets bigger all the time , and she 's definitely getting longer . Her hair is getting longer too ! She 's able to only take her medicine once a day now , and she spits up much less too . Her normal feeding is about every 2 hours , with breakfast of 2T of cereal and a taste of a new fruit or vegetable in the morning , and then 3T of cereal and a half jar of a fruit or veggie in the evening . Her favorites are sweet potatoes , carrots , and apples . She is not yet ready for Stage 2 food , as she " chokes " on it and doesn 't like the texture . She is also still growing her first tooth . Developmentally , I think this has been the biggest month for Addy . She 's sitting really well by herself . She 's standing for slight moments holding on to furniture . If you hold her hands , she makes walking motions with her feet all the way across a room . She grabs everything within her sight and puts it into her mouth . She 's really getting more talkative too , stringing sounds together , especially aye - aye - aye . . . She can also drink a little from a cup , in that she can take a sip , turn away , take another sip . She 's sleeping by herself , not wrapped up in her swaddler anymore . She 'll sometimes play in her crib before and / or after her naps too , without crying or anything . She doesn 't really seem to be into crawling . She enjoys NOT being on her stomach , still . She loves silly laughing , being surprised and anything new . Such a cutie ! Yesterday , we spent the morning preparing for brunch . It turned out great ! We went through almost a whole 13x9 of egg casserole , 15 sausage patties , about 6 potatoes , and a dozen or so pancakes . So now I have a few yummy leftovers : ) After brunch , Addy passed out . Then after playing and a bath , we went to church . It was a kind of cool service - it wasn 't like normal . We did a " journey " through the church year in one night . We had a short explanation of a season , and then sang a song from each of the 6 seasons . It was pretty cool . But since there wasn 't one long homily , we didn 't have to worry about screeching or pooping during church ! She was really good , and even made the little boy sitting behind us tell his mom that he wanted a baby in their house . The mom said no way ! Today was a busy day . Addy and I got up nice and early and ran the Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis . It was Addy 's 3rd race , and we shaved 3 min and 3 sec off of our last run in Fort Wayne ! It was really exciting . Then we came home , got ready and did a little shopping in the afternoon . Then Addy was being a little fussy , and I couldn 't figure out why , until I realized she hadn 't had her medicine yet , and then she was fine the rest of the night . We definitely can 't give it up quite yet ! Here is a talking compilation video I made ! http : / / www . youtube . com / watch ? v = QhKEqjJ1NXQ Putting Hogwart 's spells on daddy ! Today was an interesting day . First we had Little Lambs , and Addy had lots of fun . She enjoyed playing with the toys and sat still for most of the lesson . Then we painted . . . . She was supposed to make a hand turkey , but we decided to pretty much do her hand print , because she still curls her hand up , instead of leaving it out straight ( so that we could make each finger a different color ) . She did really well with the first hand print . The second one was ok , but as I was reaching to get her paper towel to wipe her off right away , she put her hand right on her pants . My hand had pink on it too , so I ended up getting a little spot on her shirt , but hey , her hand " turkeys " look cool : ) After that was snack time , and awesome as I am , I spilled some of her formula powder right on the carpet floor . : ( After playing , we tried to go to a new post office , one that was right next to church . We parked at the door , next to a few other cars . Up on the door was a sign that said that the customer entrance had moved , and it was now in the back of the building . So we tried to drive down to the left , but there was a sign that said authorized vehicles only . So we tried to drive around the right side , same sign . So I decided that the post office was stupid , and we would try somewhere else . We did eventually get to the post office , as well as a few other errands . We came home , and the rest of the day , Addy wouldn 't take her naps like a good girl . I guess I messed them up too much with the morning 's activities . But that meant she went to bed early , so I could actually get something done . : ) Addy hasn 't been working on any new mobility " tricks " lately , she 's been working on talking . She loves talking a lot , especially if you prompt her . It 's pretty cute . I 'm working on a video to show everyone soon ! One other funny story that doesn 't have to do with us . We were walking through Kohls , and the lingerie was on the opposite side of the aisle . There was a girl , about 5 years old , and her mom walking past . The liPosted by Sneak peek of Addy 's Christmas dress ! Today , daddy left super early to head to Columbia for the day . Addy and I ran a few errands and went to the grocery store . The grocery store we went to had " Coupon Thursday " today . If you spend $ 50 , you get $ 10 off your order . Needless to say , it was PACKED . You would have thought that it was Christmas Eve , but it was 11am on a Thursday , a full week before Thanksgiving . Other than that , it was a pretty normal day . Here is a funny story though : We stopped in the Target parking lot to have a bottle this morning . Addy and I just sat in the car to stay warm , then I buckled her into her seat . I tried to open the door , when I remembered that a few weeks ago , someone accidentally set the child lock on the back door , and we never figured out how to undo it . So . . . . I climbed over the car seat and out the other side . I fixed the child lock on the door right then . Hopefully that never happens again ! Interesting Note : Most people have dogs that bark when the doorbell rings . We have a doorbell that rings when the dog barks , which makes him bark more . It 's a vicious cycle . Oh what a night . After I put Addy to bed last night , she woke up 4 times , screaming . She had to be calmed down every time . We still aren 't sure what it was . Maybe her flu shot from the day before , maybe she wasn 't completely tired , since she had a weird nap schedule yesterday . Maybe her teeth . She was fine today , so I have no idea . Hopefully it doesn 't happen tonight ! Today was an unexciting day of shopping . We didn 't find any of the Christmas presents we were looking for , but we did buy our first baby gate ! Some exciting news though - we definitely have grass growing in the yard . There are a few blades I 've seen here and there , but I wasn 't sure if some of those were there from before construction . These blades I saw today were in the middle of the work area . Hopefully the rain tonight will help grow the grass too : ) Addy has been doing a few cute things lately . Today , I brought Addy over to my computer while I finished up an email message . When I closed my browser , and her picture ( my desktop ) showed up , she stared at it and gave the baby on the screen a huge smile . I guess she recognized herself . She is also starting to be able to catch herself if she falls to her side when she is sitting . Too bad she can 't catch herself when she 's falling backwards - that 's usually the direction she 's going . Addy has also been funny in the bath . Josh gave her a bath the other night . First we put her feet in the water to let her know what 's going on . Then we lay her down on the bath pad . Josh put her feet in the water , she started grunting and then started peeing . He said , Oh ! , and pulled her out and she stopped peeing . He waited for awhile , but she didn 't go anymore , so he put her feet back in . She grunted again and finished peeing . She peed in the bath for me today too . Apparently , she 's started that gross habit up again ! And finally , for your enjoyment , 3 min of Addy laughing . http : / / www . youtube . com / watch ? v = piyivj2UgSI Today was a pretty normal day . Addy still isn 't eating her bananas . She did eat a half jar of sweet potatoes though . Today we ventured to Walmart and then Kohls . When I went to pay , I couldn 't find my Kohl 's cash , even though I knew it was in the magazine I brought . So I told the lady I would look for it , and then have it taken off at customer service . After we checked out , I found it , so we went to the back . It turns out she didn 't use my coupon from the front of the magazine for 30 % off either , so by going to the back , I saved almost $ 30 ! ! Yea coupons : ) Addy took a 3 hour nap after that . She went to bed really early tonight , so I 'm going to go to bed early too , just in case she wakes up early ! Addy is so excited - this is post # 100 , and most of them are about her ! It was originally supposed to be a blog written from Toby 's point of view . Obviously that has not happened , way harder than I thought it would be . . . anyway . . . Yesterday , we went to church . During the homily this time . . . . nothing ! She was a perfect angel . Of course she was fussy off and on , but she stayed quiet and unsmelly : ) She even fell asleep in daddy 's arms . So cute : ) When we got home , we made wings and fries for the football game . Then we enjoyed a Colts victory ! We just chilled out the rest of the night at home . Today was a very busy day . I did 2 loads of laundry , watered the yard and showered , all before 11 . We then went to the doctor to get Addy 's flu shot . The nurse gave her the shot , then as she was putting on the bandage , she gave a little fussy cry , and then she smiled at her . She did so good ! Then we went out to lunch with daddy , and it was delicious . After a pretty normal afternoon , I went to the neighbors house for ladies night bunco . I met some of the other ladies in the neighborhood , which was fun . The December meeting sounds really fun too : ) While I was gone , daddy had a lot of fun with Addy . He claims he had her cracking up , laughing so hard . Later , after he had put her to bed , he found Toby laying down next to her crib . So sad I missed it , but it was so nice to be out of the house ! Yesterday was a bittersweet day . We went to the lake for our last walk : ( of the year , I 'm sure . It was so beautiful , about 68 degrees and sunny . : ) Addy was very good for the first 2 miles out of 3 . 7 . Then she wanted to be held . By that point I was exhausted , and really didn 't feel like carrying an extra 15lbs and pushing the stroller . I was able to get her back in after about half a mile , and we finished the walk . The rest of the day was pretty normal . We got Addy 's 6mo . pics in the mail - they are sooooo cute ! ! Then , I took Addy and Toby out for a short walk in the afternoon , and the neighbor lady came out of her house , so we stopped to talk . Of course , I only put Toby 's collar on , not his harness since we weren 't going very far , and when we stopped to talk , he slipped out of the leash . He ran around the front yard a little bit , then Jera caught him , and we were able to go back inside . What a trouble doggy ! ! Today , we tried bananas with Addy for the first time . She only sort of liked them , I 'm not sure . They sure do smell bad though , I wouldn 't blame her if she didn 't like them . We cleaned the house today and rearranged furniture in the basement , again . I think we finally have it set up the way we want now . After Addy ate dinner , we were trying to eat dinner and gave her some celery for her gums . Well , we can 't do that anymore . Now she can get little pieces of it off , with her sharp little tooth . We 'll have to stick with graham crackers . Addy is definitely getting to be a big girl now . We have weaned her off her swaddler as of this week . She is also sleeping through the night again , after a few nights of waking up during the middle of the night . Thankfully , all we had to do is give her a pacifier to get her to go back to sleep , but it still is nice not to have that anymore . The past 3 days , we have been giving her medicine only at night for her tummy , and it seems to be working just fine . Maybe someday we 'll be able to take her off of it altogether ! I also haven 't had to give her tylenol the past 2 nights , her teePosted by Thursday was a big day for Addy . Her tooth is still coming in , you can see just a little of it now . We went to the grocery store to pick up some cereal for her . In the frozen aisle , I heard her making noise with her hands . It wasn 't really clapping , but she was getting a little noise out : ) Then we came home and I fed her a bottle on the couch . I thought I 'd let her see if she could stand on the cushion with her hands on the back of the couch . She did , for a second or two ! That was definitely a first . Usually her knees collapse , and she just sits down . Later we were playing with some connecting rings , and I had taken them apart . She had one in each hand and was playing with both of them ! She didn 't just drop one immediately . We also went for a walk yesterday , but mommy made a very bad choice of paths to take . We went into a neighborhood , whose sidewalk is right next to the street . It was trash day , and so all the trash was right in the middle of the sidewalk . We knocked over one trash can and the wheels of the stroller got caught on the handles of a trash bag . No more walking in that neighborhood on Thursdays ! ! Today was a pretty good day . Addy was a very VERY hungry baby today . Speaking of food , Addy tried pears for the first time yesterday . I still can 't decide if she likes them or not . She keeps eating them , but she has a weird look on her face . As of today , she has also discovered her diaper area . . . . Today we went shopping . Addy got a pair of shoes that she is modeling above , cowgirl boots ! Mommy also got a few things to wear for the upcoming holidays . After shopping , Toby , Addy and I went to the park to check out the lake and swing on the swings . It was a fun , busy day ! Today was just another normal day . I did lots of laundry and dishes and playing with Addy . We also went for a long walk around the neighborhood in the beautiful weather . I have noticed some interesting things however . The number of houses in the past 2 days we 've seen completely decorated for Christmas : 3 . The number of mosquito bites I received today : 1 . The month : November . Some of these things are just not right . . . Instead of a home picture today , check out a preview of Addy 's photo shoot from yesterday : http : / / suitetphotography . wordpress . com / Yesterday , we went to church in the morning . Beforehand , we asked Addy what she was going to do during the homily this time . She wouldn 't tell us , apparently it was going to be a surprise . And what a smelly , poopy surprise it was : ) After church , we went to Panera and then Target . We got her Christmas present , a small kitchen , which we played at home with her for a little bit while it was still in the box . She was LOVING it . I can 't wait until Christmas when we can get it out and really play with it ! Then we came home and relaxed until Erin , mommy 's friend from her work in Indy came by . Erin was traveling from California back to Ohio , where she was moving from Irvine to Columbus . Hopefully we 'll get to see more of her now . Today was a busy day , I wonder what our water bill would be for just today . . . over an hour of watering the yard , 3 loads of laundry , 1 dishwasher load , 2 showers , and a baby 's bath . We also had to make an emergency run to Sam 's Club , since there was NO formula powder in the house ! Then we went to get Addy 's 6 mo . pics taken . She wasn 't real happy ; I think her tooth was bothering her . But then daddy made us delicious pancakes for dinner , and everyone was happy : D Thursday was a rough day . Addy was cranky off and on . I even ended up giving her a dose of Tylenol , just in case something was sore . I was thinking maybe she was having a growth spurt , and it was making her hurt a little . It was a nice day temperature wise , but was quite windy , but we decided to go for a walk anyway . I think some of the neighbors looked at me weird , when I was pushing a stroller in that wind , but we needed some fresh air . I kept checking on Addy ( she was covered up by the shades on the stroller ) and she was nice and toasty warm and enjoying the fresh air . Toby was the trouble one to walk , which is typical . Then we came inside for some cereal . We went back outside to start the watering for the night , when daddy called , and said his truck wouldn 't start , and we needed to come rescue him . So we turned off the water , got changed and left for daddy 's work . We jumpstarted the truck , then took it to Autozone , where they said the battery was dead . So we bought a new battery . Addy was pretty upset during this time - she just wanted to go home and be in familiar surroundings . She screamed the whole way home , and it didn 't help that we sat through 2 cycles of a red light , before pretty much running the third one on the " orange " light . Oh well , we got her home and she was much better . She even enjoyed gumming a graham cracker : ) What a day . . . Showing off her puppy dog slippersThen Friday morning came . We got up early to go to Little Lambs . Addy was very good , but wanted her paci almost the whole time . She sort of listened to the story , and then did very well with the craft . We traced her body onto a large piece of paper , and then decorated it to look like her . She loved playing with the pink and purple crayon and then with a piece of paper I cut off for her . Everyone there noticed how well she was sitting now - whole minutes even . She 's been doing really awesome ! She also has orange poop , which means . . . . . she loves eating her sweet potatoes AND carrots ! Finally we found something she likes . Then , while we were hPosted by The yard is looking great . It 's nice that it will finally be quiet around here . . . well , construction quiet : ) They put all the seed down last night , then came back this morning to concrete in the fence post . There is still a missing piece of fence until that is dry , so hopefully by Monday , we 'll be all set . Now for all the watering . Josh got his truck * fixed * ( fingers crossed ! ) . We charged his battery off of the Nissan , and got it going , twice . We 'll see how tomorrow goes , but we may do the 50K tuneup / check a little bit early ; ) Let 's hope it keeps working . Other than that , Addy and I had a pretty normal day . She was still cranky and wanted to nap quite a bit , but today she ate her cereal and about 5 spoonfuls of her sweet potatoes . We also let her chew on a graham cracker at dinner . She seemed to like it , and we were able to eat , so we will probably be continuing that in the future . Tomorrow is her first day of carrots - hopefully she 'll like those too ! Addy loves to be naked baby ! Today has been an interesting day . Addy woke up about her normal time and drank a bottle . Then , when she was hungry again , I made her some cereal . Instead of excitingly eating it up , as usual , she cried the whole time I attempted it . So I gave her a bottle and then she went down for a nap . I tried twice after the nap to give her the food , but she was still not interested . I tried to give her a bath , but she got upset halfway through that . She doesn 't want to play with her toys very long either . She is being kind of cuddly , which is rare , so at least I am enjoying that : ) And with all the napping , almost everything is unpacked already ! The cute thing Addy has done today and did yesterday , is that she is discovering her hands . She looks at her palm , then turns her hand over and looks at the back . She is just studying it . So cute ! Josh came home early today . Instead of Addy and I going to vote , and then to pick up Toby this morning , ( as was the plan ) Josh had to take the car , because the truck wouldn 't start this morning . So when he got home , we all went to vote . I looked up online where to vote , since our cards got lost in the mail , or so I thought . Apparently , we weren 't registered to vote . The guy told us to call our old county to see if we were registered there , and we could go back by our old house to do so . But no , they have that we moved to St . Charles County , but somehow , St . Charles County says we can 't vote here . So we didn 't get to vote . We are hoping for landslide victories , so that our votes wouldn 't have mattered as much . So then we went to pick up Toby . He was excited to see me for a little bit , then he was more interested in smelling everything . Then we dropped him off and went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner . It was slightly disappointing , enough that we probably won 't go back again . Then , as we pulled into the garage , Josh broke the mirror on my car . It 's not as bad as his car , but it did come off . I snapped it back on , and then taped it , just to be sure . Then , we checked out his truck . We think Posted by I was going to put this at the end . . . . but the most exciting news of the weekend - Josh and I are going to be an aunt and uncle . . . . Addy is going to have a cousin ! Josh 's sister Stephanie and his brother - in - law Jon are going to have a baby in June ! Congrats guys ! Happy Halloween everyone ! We had a very busy holiday weekend . On Friday , we left bright and early for Fort Wayne , dropping Toby off at the puppy hotel beforehand . When we got to Grandma and Grandad Gentry 's house , we helped celebrate Maddi 's birthday . We all walked through the woods in preparation for the haunted woods that we would have later in the night . Addy did her teradactyl voice for most of the time , and she just kept smiling : ) During the party , Addy slept , while mommy and daddy scared all of the kids ! Afterward , Addy woke up and laughed at all the girls in their facepaint . It was very amusing : ) On Saturday we went to Great - Grandma Huber 's 80th birthday party . Addy was good most of the night , except for the sleeping part . She decided she wasn 't going to take a nap for anything . But we did go trick - or - treating around Aunt Barb 's house and got lots of goodies . She then enjoyed a sour stick ( see above ) . She loved eating the sugar , and didn 't mind the sour part . Sunday , we ate and relaxed until it was time for trick - or - treating . We walked around Grandma and Grandad Gentry 's neighborhood and picked up lots of treats . We went around with Aunt Ally and Aunt Maddi and had a blast . ( Daddy was the fisherman , Addy was the lobster , and mommy was the chef . ) We hung out until it was time for bed . Monday , we went to brunch with all the grandmas and grandpas , after trying on the witch slippers she got for Halloween . Addy ate the lemons , which she enjoyed : / Such a weird child sometimes . . . just like aunt Sarah . . . . Then we drove all the way home . Addy was very good in the car , but eager to get out too . We quickly unpacked , just in time for the Colts game . Since we were just in time , we decided to feed Addy her dinner in the basement . She was sitting in her bumbo seat , aPosted by |
We received our adoption assistance paperwork in the mail yesterday for both Baylee & Caleb , which means now we can petition for their adoptions . It has only been a little over 2 months since that paperwork was sent to the state . . . obviously it was not at the top of their priority list . Don 't get too excited , though . It will still probably be several months before we actually get a court date . Once we file the petition , there is something else that has to be sent to the state before we can even get a court date . But , at least we are moving forward . I don 't worry too much about it since we know we get to keep them , but it would be nice to actually get to make legal decisions for them and to not have to remember their legal names whenever we go to the doctor or court . ( Right now , I don 't even have Caleb 's medical insurance card , the carrier won 't send it to me because I am not his legal guardian . I 'm just the one who actually takes him to the doctor and the one who has to sign the forms at the doctor . Luckily , the clinic was able to get the information they needed , but , still , it would be nice to have it myself . ) Maybe we can even get their adoptions finalized by the end of the year . ( But I wouldn 't hold your breath ) . Of my 5 children , 2 are biologically mine & my husbands . The other 3 all have the same biological mother and different biological fathers . In the past I never really gave much thought to any sort of bond between biological siblings . I just kind of thought that when you grow up in the same house together , you usually end up being fairly close to each other & acting a lot like each other . And , honestly , with my 2 oldest boys , I never really looked for signs that there was any sort of special bond , other than brothers living in the same house , and sharing the same bedroom , for that matter . But now that we have our youngest 3 children who are not biologically related to the oldest 2 , or to my husband & I for that matter , I have to admit , there just might be something biological that gives us a closer bond than just growing up together . Then again , maybe I 'm just imagining it , who knows ? Some things I expected , they all have the same nose , and the same belly laugh , I think their smiles are pretty similar , too . Amata & Caleb have the same big brown eyes ( Baylee does not have the Hispanic genes in her , so she 's got blue eyes ) . So far , Caleb seems to have a knack for getting into trouble , just like Amata . Baylee is young enough that she doesn 't really get into trouble , unless you count her constantly trying to go down the stairs by herself . But some things I didn 't expect . When Caleb was just starting to laugh , we had to work so hard trying to get laughs out of that boy ! I dang near broke a sweat sometimes . Amata on the other hand , could run in a circle 10 feet away from him and he would laugh so hard , a deep belly laugh . It is the same way with Baylee . We can get her to laugh if we are tickling her or something like that , but for Caleb & Amata she will laugh just looking at them . Caleb can be almost sitting on her , which I don 't think could feel that great , and she will just start laughing . I 'm just saying , it 's not fair ! Chris & I are the ones getting up in the middle of the night and changing the mountain of dirty diapePosted by Since I shared the attitude my 12 year old has at times , I feel it is only fair to share his good days , too . Tyler brought a slip home from school yesterday stating that he would be going bowling this afternoon . Our middle school has accepted Rachel 's Challenge . As part of that , several students & teachers have certificates to give out when they catch a student being respectful or responsible , or basically being a good role model . Once they give out the certificate , that person gets a treat & entered into a drawing to go bowling . That person is also then given the certificate to pass onto to somebody they catch being a good role model . The idea is that you never know who has the certificates , so hopefully the students will try to be respectful all of the time . Tyler said a teacher gave him the certificate because he was helping another student with his homework . I 'm not sure when he was actually given the certificate , but they had the drawing earlier this week & his name was drawn to go on the bowling trip . Nice job , Tyler ! I took my 3 youngest to Sears yesterday to get their pictures taken . Amata just turned 3 , Caleb is 1 1 / 2 & Baylee is 8 months . I usually try to take a day off so that I can have their pictures done on a weekday when it is less busy . But this also means I have to take them all by myself . Amata went first , she 'd the easiest one . She loves to see pictures of herself and is usually very smiley when there is a camera around . Although , she also gets pretty wiggly , too . I try to limit myself to only purchasing 2 different poses of each child , because with 5 it can get spendy ! This picture was probably my favorite , except for the fact that she looks way older than 3 years old ! She 's even got the mussed hair ! Baylee went next , and she did fine , but she was pretty stingy with her smiles . This one was by far the best smile of the day . I just liked her expression on this one . Caleb went last , hoping that he would have warmed up a little by then . The last time we got his pictures done I had to bring him back a second time because he was having NONE of that ! The second time around started out pretty iffy . After a couple of minutes the girl suggested that maybe we should let the other appointment go first and see if he 's better after that . I also brought one of his balls , because the best way to make Caleb like you is to play catch with him . So , this time , I remembered to bring a ball , and I let them know from the beginning that he should go last . He wasn 't great , but at least I got a couple of cute pictures from him . She pretty much had to be ready to take the picture & I would try to get him to go onto the background . That 's why she had to put his name on this one - to fill up that side of the picture because he was standing so far to the side . This one wasn 't too bad , I thought . I 'm pretty sure this is a full body one they cropped . I wasn 't planning to take a picture of just the 3 of them , but the girls were willing to give it a try . The smiles are pretty iffy , but I still thought it was cute . Can you tell it was the last picturePosted by Tyler is 12 , almost 12 1 / 2 which officially makes him a " pre - teen " , and the attitude that boy has had lately does not make me look forward to the teenage years ! I should preface this by saying that when Tyler is with other people he is a very nice young man . In fact , I was working the City Wide clean up last weekend and one of his teachers made it a point to tell me how much he enjoyed having Tyler in his class . In our schools , they use steps for discipline . You start with one step , which is basically just a warning for everything from talking in class to forgetting to have your planner signed , and it goes up to steps 5 or 6 which lead to detention , suspension , etc . Last year , the only step Tyler had all year was given to him on the first day of school by a teacher who wanted to set a precedent because some of Tyler 's friends had been talking in class . This year , his only step was from forgetting to have a math test signed . So , really , I 'm not exaggerating when I say he can be a nice boy . Maybe that is why he can be so irritating with us , maybe that 's how he 's able to be so nice in school . Yesterday , on our way home ( maybe not " on the way " but in the general area ) we decided to go to the outlet mall because both the boys think they want to buy themselves a leather coat , and I had told them I would buy them an outfit at Old Navy . ( I kind of wanted to stop at Liz Claiborne , too , but the babies had had enough by then ) Wilson 's Leather didn 't have any coats their size , so that was a bust , but we did still make it to Old Navy . In addition to the shorts & shirt each of the boys picked out , I also got them each a pair of jean 's that were on clearance for only $ 8 , and Tyler also got some flip flops since he didn 't have any yet , this year . From there we went for lunch . I had mentioned the other night that I thought we 'd been eating out a little too often , and not at very healthy places , so we decided to go to Subway since we still had about an hours drive home , and waiting to eat there wasn 't an option . Tyler had said he waPosted by We decided to stay at our camper this weekend , the first time this season . We decided to get a seasonal site this year , hoping that we 'd use it more than last year if we didn 't have to get it set up & take it down every time we wanted to go . Plus , when we did tow it last year , we got about 6 miles a gallon . . . . and with gas prices at almost $ 4 a gallon already , who can afford to tow a camper ! Luckily , when we bought this camper , we were thinking ahead . Although we didn 't think we would have 5 children at the time we bought it , we did want to have enough room for more foster children or so that the boys could bring a friend sometimes . Little did we know that this camper that technically sleeps 9 ( 7 comfortably ) would barely be big enough for all of us ! We did have a good time , though . And hopefully , we 'll camp enough this year that the babies will get used to sleeping in it . Last night was OK , but both Caleb & Baylee woke up a couple of times . There is a river not too far from our camp site , which the kids enjoyed walking to & skipping rocks . Amata threw a bunch of sticks in for the crocodile that she decided lives in the river . I wasn 't aware that crocodiles lived in any rivers in Minnesota , maybe Amata knows something I don 't ! Because she is certain there is one in that river . Caleb just liked the being outside part of camping . Hopefully it will be warm enough to use the pool next time we go . And hopefully they will have the baby pool filled by then , since that was a big reason I wanted to stay at this campground ! Swimming is not as much fun when all you do is walk around carrying babies . Amata & Caleb will have much more fun if they can actually walk & play in the baby pool . It was supposed to storm this afternoon & evening , so one night was all we spent there . Now we can spend tomorrow cleaning this house . . . it gets pretty bad in the summer when there is so much to do outside . Even though we have put our phone number on the do not call list , we still seem to get a lot of unwanted calls . And since my husband runs a daycare out of our home , simply not answering calls that show up as " unavailable " on the caller ID is not an option . Chris will get several telemarketing calls during the day , and they just don 't get a clue when we hang up on them , so he has started giving the phone to Amata when whey call . She loves it ! What I cannot believe is how long these people will stay on the line . One guy stayed on with her for almost 5 minutes ! He kept asking if he could talk to her mommy and she kept changing the subject , usually to one of her many boo - boos . Today , while I was home for lunch , a call came in that said it was from Ontario . . . . I don 't think we know anybody from there . Amata talked to them for about a minute or so . Her side of the conversation went something like this : Hi . What - cha doin ? I got a owie on my arm . Why she said be quiet ? ( laughing ) My baby Baylee is crying . I 'm gonna play outside with my friends later . Why she said be quiet ? ( laughing ) Bye . Mommy , you want to say bye ? I 'm gonna hang up now . It might be mean , but I just really don 't understand why they stay on the line so long with her . We 've listened on another phone before & they will ask her questions and everything . You would think they would figure out by now that if I want a better interest rate or credit insurance , or whatever else they are offering , I 'll call them . . . don 't call me . I don 't buy anything over the phone . I 've mentioned before that we live in a pretty small town , so when I 'm in town , it doesn 't faze me at all when people remember me . I 'm on a first name basis with the nurses , doctors & receptionists at the clinic in town . . . I 've been there at least 6 times so far this year , 3 times in the last month & a half , for check ups . But , when we need to go to urgent care for after hours things , we have to drive to Albert Lea which is about 20 - 25 minutes away , and has a population of over 10 , 000 people . There are times when I go to Albert Lea & people do remember me , but that is usually because those people are from my town . Although , I admit the owners of the 2 consignment stores there do remember me . . . but I have 5 kids , so I shop there a lot ! On Sunday , I decided to take Baylee into urgent care , she had goopy eyes . It didn 't look like pink eye , so I figured it was a cold in her eyes since she did also have a runny nose . But she didn 't sleep very well Saturday night , so I wanted to have her ears checked - I just hate ear infections at night . So , I went to the front desk and said I wanted to have Baylee checked . When she asked for her name I had to think for a minute , since I don 't use her legal name very often . The nurse then looked at me & said , " Oh , that 's right , your a foster parent , I remember you . " I think that might be a sign that I am there just a little too often ! I 'm a little behind , but to all to all of the mom 's out there , I hope you had a great day ! I had a very nice mother 's day . I got to sleep in , even though Chris didn 't get to sleep in on his day ( Saturday ) due to the garage sale , and a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs around 6 : 15 . Then the kids wanted me to opened gifts right away . The boys always do such a nice job ! Cameron picked out earrings for me , and Tyler picked out some flip flops for camping this summer . The babies got me a new key fob for my truck . ( You don 't realize how nice they are until yours goes out for a month & you have to unlock the doors with an actual key while carrying a baby or two . ) Chris also got me a new mother 's ring , since we are officially done . Completely . No matter what ! 5 children , a daycare and a full time job are all that we can handle . We 've probably bitten off a little more than we can chew at this point … my house is filthy ! We 're thinking about getting a maid it is so filthy ! But that 's a whole other story . I really like the ring , and wanted to post a picture of it , but no matter what I try , it always seems to end up blurry , so you 'll just have to trust me that it is very pretty . We decided to go to Mankato and I was planning to go to Red Lobster . But at 1 : 30 they were still saying it would be an hour & a half wait . So we ended up at Chinese buffet , which I usually like , but when I was hungry for Red Lobster … you know . After that Baylee & I went to Sam 's Club & Wal Mart for groceries while Chris & the other kids went to get a new front door . Very exciting , isn 't it ? ! The boys did help me to unload the truckload of snacks & frozen goods from Sam 's when I got home , I don 't even think they complained about it . . . that must have been their final Mother 's Day gift . Trish - thanks for your comments . We are working on baby signs with Caleb , and we will do them with Baylee , too , but unfortunately , our reason for doing them with Caleb is our of necessity . I may have mentioned before that Amata is a tad bit hyper . She can also talk non - stop . If she is not talking she is singing , and if she is not doing either , you better go check on her because she is probably getting into trouble . I realize that she is female , but even so , she talks a lot ! I have thought once or twice that it would be nice to have a child that maybe didn 't talk quite so much . Caleb does not talk at all . He understands what you tell him . For example , if you tell him to throw something in the garbage he will . If you tell him to throw something in the laundry he will . If you tell him no , he will at least pause for a moment . But as of right now , he does not say ANY words . Not even mommy , daddy , or bye - bye . He will wave good - bye , but he won 't say it . And , actually , he really doesn 't even have any consonant sounds that he uses on a regular basis . As much as we hope that he doesn 't have fetal alcohol syndrome , the fact is we know that his biological mother consumed alcohol when she was pregnant with him , and we know that he has been slightly behind on reaching his milestones . The school began working with him a couple of months ago and we have seen some improvement already . Currently he knows signs for the words more , bubbles & milk . He has also made up his own sign for good night ( to be honest , the sign he uses for " more " is kind of his own version , too , but it 's close to the real sign ) . Also , since they have been working with him we have also heard him say " mo " which I think is because " more " is the sign we 've been working on the most . Chris said he also heard a B sound from him . We know he is capable of talking , and that his hearing is fine , so it should be just a matter of time . At least it better be , I just don 't know if I could learn American Sign Language at this point ! The ironic part , though , is that Posted by We 've actually had a couple of nice spring days here , finally ! Which means it is time for bubbles ! This is also an educational tool , as it is one of the signs Caleb is supposed to be working on . He loves bubbles ! But he is only 1 1 / 2 , so after a few minutes of bubbles he was done with that and was ready to go camping . Caleb also recently tried his first bubble gum , it was blue , can you tell ? It was Amata 's birthday on Saturday , and she turned 3 . So now I can no longer say that 3 of my children are under 3 . Her birthday landed on the city - wide garage sale , so we didn 't do cake of gifts until later in the afternoon . We also didn 't go out to eat because both Caleb & Baylee were sporting runny noses & watery eyes . So , she had to settle for take out from Dairy Queen . Chris & the boys had picked out a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for her , but then we discovered we were out of candles ( even though I KNOW we had several left after Cameron 's birthday ) . She was not liking having to wait until they got home before we could have cake . Having to wait to open her presents until they got back was also tough . That was probably the longest 15 minutes of her life ! But finally it was time . She seemed to love all of her gifts . She enjoyed her new book from Nana . She sat down in her new Tinkerbell chair to read it . Dolls are always a hit . Notice that she made sure to put her new baby next to her in her new chair before she opened the rest of her gifts . She was a little upset that it was raining out , and the garage was still full , so she couldn 't ride her " icicle " that day . She was also pretty mad that her brother kept teasing her & trying to ride her " icicle " before she got to . She did try to ride it a little bit in the house , but it 's kind of hard to peddle with heels on ! I think her favorite gifts were the dress up set & shoes . She is female , after all , and she LOVES to wear " pretties " . Tyler like her dress up set , too . After gifts she enjoyed her cake & ice cream , as did the rest of us . After that she just played more dress up . Posted by My sisters came down to help with our garage sale last weekend , so the boys both gave up their bedrooms so they could sleep there . Cameron slept downstairs and Tyler opted to sleep upstairs on the couch . I bet he was rethinking that choice at 7 AM . See , Tyler is not usually an early morning type of guy , he 's really more of a sleep till noon type . Caleb is not a sleep in kind of guy , and he feels that anyone who is not sleeping in a room with a closed door is fair game . It started off innocently enough . Caleb pulled back the blanket and laid down next to Tyler . And then he pulled the covers back over him . Isn 't that cute ! But then Caleb got bored with that and decided it was time for Tyler to get up & play with him . " Wake up Tyler ! " " I said Wake Up ! " " Fine , if you 're not going to get up & play with me , I 'm going to take your new Rugby ball that Auntie Marnee brought back from New Zealand ! " Posted by I love seeing my kids share . It makes you feel good as a parent that they 've learned how to share with others . But sometimes , they share too much . I guess Caleb thought Baylee must have fallen asleep in her crib because she was bored and didn 't have enough toys . Amata loves to share . . . especially when it benefits her . If you are eating something she wants , she will say , " I share it with you , mommy . " She has also figured out how to use it to avoid getting into trouble . At the garage sale this weekend , she took a baggie that had plastic bracelets off of the table . The first thing she did with them was to " share " them by giving Caleb one . Because how can you get mad at her when she just took it so her little brother can have one ? Seriously , how can you ? I 'd like to know because otherwise we are in for a lot of trouble as this girl gets older ! Tyler is 12 right now , and has officially begun that pre - teen woe - is - me attitude that I am well aware will continue for the next 6 years . Okay , so it will probably last longer than 6 years , but at least he won 't be living full time with us after that . No , really , he won 't be . I 've already explained to him that if he wants to be a pro - ball player he has to go to college , and everybody knows it is important to live in the dorms the first year or two of college . Anyway , back to the attitude . During one of our many " discussions " with Tyler about chores he needs to do , or helping watch the babies ( the 20 minute " discussions " where he whines about " why does he have to " and we say because I said so again & again & again ) , he said that he should get to stay up later than Cameron because he is older ( just over 2 years older ) and in 6th grade and when we had foster children that were in 6th grade they got to say up until 9 . We thought about it and I told him if he could make it for the rest of the week without using that irritating , whiny , girl voice that I just can 't stand , we would consider letting him stay up later . ( Seriously , I 'll have to record that voice sometime , I just can 't do it justice trying to explain it ) And he actually made it the rest of the week , so we bumped his bedtime back . Now , our boys are somewhat spoiled and they each do have a TV in their room , which I am totally blaming on their grandpa , since he gave them their current TV 's ( I really see no relevance in the fact that I bought Tyler one when he was 4 so that he would stop sleeping in our bed ) . Our boys are also incredibly picky eaters . I 'll have to use a whole separate post for that discussion ! So for dinner , we 've tried a million different ways to make them at least try it , nothing has worked . So finally , we decided that if they don 't eat dinner , they lose the TV in their room for a week . This has totally worked for Cameron . It might take him an hour , but he will finally try dinner so that he doesn 't lose the TV . For Tyler , it hasn 't worked so welPosted by I found this picture of Caleb as a newborn . If I didn 't know any better , he looks like he might have been a little intoxicated . . . falling through his cradle like that . The recommendation from the " experts " at this time is that there should not be a bumper pad in cribs & cradles , and since we are licensed daycare & foster care providers , that recommendation is a requirement for us . I don 't necessarily agree with that , because sleeping like this can 't be comfortable ! The first round of my garage sale went really well ! Even though it was FREEZING the whole time ( silly me for thinking it would be a tad bit warm in May ! ) , but at least it wasn 't raining . I decided to do it for 2 weekends this year , so I 'll have round 2 this weekend . I did manage to catch a cold , of course . I guess sitting in the FREEZING cold for 5 hours will do that to you ! So I ended up in bed buy 8 : 30 Saturday night . Chris had gone to pick up the camper so it was just me & the kids . I got the youngest 2 babies to sleep & left Amata with Tyler & Cameron . It was kind of neat to see how they would do getting themselves to bed at a reasonable time , and such . I must say I was pleasantly surprised . Before I went upstairs , I told them I had the main door locked & the doors from the outside into the garage locked , but they would have to lock the other door after the dog went out for the last time . I also told them that they might want to get to bed at a decent time because if I didn 't feel any better in the morning , they would have to help me with the babies since Chris wasn 't going to be home until later in the morning . At one point Tyler thought he heard somebody knocking at the door , but instead of opening it himself , he came up & got me . ( There was nobody there , but at least he knew not to open it unless I was available . ) I heard them make some microwave popcorn at one point . But by 10 : 30 they were both in bed . I know that because that is when Amata came into my room and wanted to sleep in my bed . So I guess maybe some night Chris & I could actually maybe , I don 't know , leave the house & go out somewhere together some night , since the boys seemed to do just fine by themselves . I spent today preparing for my annual garage sale . It is supposed to rain tomorrow , of course , just as it has the past THREE years on my garage sale . The only good thing is this year I got smart and I am having it 2 weekends . It 's the same amount of work , and since we installed a back patio last summer , I can keep the garage filled for the whole week without worrying about kids & bicycles running through it . I am considering myself somewhat of a magician , since I have managed to somehow fit everything in the garage instead of hoping to have things sitting on the driveway getting drenched . I suppose it does sound pretty bad if I mention that I have an over sized double car garage . . . and I barely managed to fit it all in there . In my defense , my sister , my mom & 2 friends also have items on my garage sale . We don 't need do mention that even with all of them going in on the sale , about 87 % of the stuff ( crap ) out there is mine . Now , some might view that as perhaps a " shopping problem " , I prefer to think of it as a " too many kids " problem . I really didn 't feel like expending any effort for dinner after all that , so we decided to do " dinner & a movie " tonight . We got a pizza & ordered a movie on Pay Per View . Mr Magoriums Wonderum Emporium . It was okay , although I don 't think I 'd watch it again . Amata did entertain me with her favorite knock - knock joke during the movie . . . Amata : Knock KnockMe : Who 's ThereAmata : AmataMe : Amata Who ( laughter from Amata ) Amata : Knock KnockMe : Who 's ThereAmata : AmataMe : Amata Who ( laughter from Amata ) And so on for about 3 or 4 more times . Okay , so I actually have 3 sons , but today I am comparing / contrasting my oldest 2 . They are like day & night ! Tyler is neat , Cameron … not so much . Cameron like to dress up ( notice the " tuxedo " he picked out for himself ) , Tyler … not so much ( notice the polo shirt that he is wearing with shorts that are hard to see , it was an argument just to get him to wear this instead of his jean shorts made to look like they had holes in them . ) Here 's another example from their pictures last fall . We actually had to buy Tyler 's shirt & shoes because he didn 't have anything nice to wear . Tyler likes sports , of any kind , Cameron will play soccer , but only because if he just runs around the field a lot , you really can 't tell that he 's barely playing . Tyler 's goal in life is to be a professional athlete . Cameron loves to play the guitar , Tyler will be lucky to pass band because he wants to quite and is mad that we are making him finish out the school year . ( Side note , at the beginning of the year , we found an inexpensive trumpet and asked him if he was planning to play it for the next year , he said yes , so we bought it . Then a month later he said he wanted to quit ) . Cameron is certain he is going to be a rock star some day . Cameron likes to ham it up in front of the camera , Tyler … not so much . When Tyler gets mad , he will argue an argue and argue forever ! When Cameron gets mad , he usually walks away and goes to his room . ( Okay , so it would probably be more healthy if he would get it out instead of hiding in his room , but if I have to pick between 30 minute arguments or hiding in his room , I choose having him hide in his room ! ) Cameron is artistic , Tyler draws stick people . I love them both , but I just marvel at how different they can be ! ! I have 5 chilren . My oldest two boys are Cameron - 11 & Tyler - 14 , my oldest daughter Amata is 4 , my youngest son Caleb is 3 and our baby daughter Baylee is 2 . I used to work in government accounting , but now my husband and I each run a daycare . |
1 ) Steve , Anthony and I went to a very lovely wedding yesterday ! Steve 's coworker Scott Smith married his lovely bride Stephanie ( so many S 's ) in an outdoor ceremony in Florence . It was honestly one of the prettiest weddings I 've seen in a long time . It was small , very simple , and frigging hot . I don 't think I 'll ever understand the allure of getting married outdoors in a southern summer , but hey . . . that 's just how some people do , I guess . The wedding was held at one of those big houses that have been re - designed to hold events , and the reception was under a big white tent in the yard . I still didn 't get to dance . : P It was just all just very lovely . I may get malaria from the mosquito bites , but at least I 'll have contracted it from being at a nice wedding ! : ) 2 ) Speaking of weddings , I 'm singing in one two weeks from now ! It 's also going to be outdoors . ( WHY ? ! ) The song I 'm singing isn 't new to me , since I 've done it in at least two other weddings before , but I 've got this fear I 'm going to screw it up ! I don 't know why . I think I 'm always a bit more stressed about singing at weddings than I am when I sing at church . Some brides , or bride 's mothers ( or hell , groom 's mothers ) will rip your face off if anything goes wrong at the wedding , even the music . Although I don 't see the bride or her mother doing this to me , even if I get up and sing a completely wrong song , I still worry . I 'm hoping that I don 't mess up the words and that I don 't pass out from the heat while I 'm singing . Fingers crossed , people ! 3 ) Oh , I just wanted to clear something up , since it wasn 't clear to some of you . . . A couple of entries ago , I talked about a parade I went to while visiting Josh in Colorado . Just to make it clear , I knew what kind of parade I was going to , I promise . I just thought it would be funny to write it as if I didn 't . Just FYI ! Heehee . 4 ) Oh Denver , My Denver , I miss your weather . I miss being able to go into the mountains to get snowed on , and I miss needing a jacket after the sun goes down . I miss not being a sweaty mess the instant I walk outdoors and I miss the fact that I could exercise outdoors without wishing I was dead . I don 't know if I 'd like living in Denver full time , but I 'd totally move there just for the lack of humidity . 5 ) Back to weddings for a second : Why do some grooms think it 's funny to smash cake in a bride 's face ? ! It isn 't , at all . It didn 't happen at the wedding we were at this weekend , but I was scared it would for a second . I mean , I 'm sure there are some brides out there who think it 's funny , but personally I think it is one of the jerkiest things a man can do on his wedding day ! You don 't spend hours on your face and hair , not to mention a stinking expensive , white dress , and want to have someone smash a pastry all over you . Of course , when it happens , usually you have a woman trying not to cry or look pissed while she 's wiping icing out of her eyelashes , and that 's just sad . Any man who 'd do that deserves to be taken out behind the reception hall and beaten by the bride 's closest male relatives . Yes , I feel strongly about it ! : P 6 ) Our yard looks insane right now . I cut it a couple of weeks ago , when it was super dry outside , and I actually thought the grass was dead for a while . Our whole lawn was brown and looked scalped . With all the rain that 's been going on for the past week or so , now it looks like a rain forest . Our lawn kind of always looks crazy , though , because our stupid weed eater sucks and we can 't edge worth a poo . It runs on this hoss battery that only stays charged for about 5 minutes at a time , so even if you start trying to get around the edges of things , you can 't possibly get it all done before the battery runs out . It 's like our whole yard needs a bikini wax . 7 ) I had to get yet another new breathing machine . I 'm about ready to give up on breathing at night and just take my chances . I had to have a periodic card scan by the medical supply place , which keeps up with usage to prove I 'm using it so that insurance will continue paying for the machine . Apparently , I had been wearing it for less than an hour at a time before I pulled it off , which is not good enough for Blue Cross / Blue Shield . I don 't blame them for that , but I wasn 't pulling it off on purpose , so I had to call the doctor and explain the deal . Now I 'm on the same kind of machine I was on in the first place for the next two weeks , only with the air ratcheted up another 4 notches , and I 'm still pulling it off in my sleep ! My personal opinion is that the air pressure is too high , which makes me feel like I 'm smothering . I believe this , because the times I 've woken up enough to be conscious of what I 'm doing , all I have to do is hit the " ramp " button to turn the air down again and I can sleep fine . However , since I didn 't go to medical school , my opinion is rather useless . I also think if I could have a mask that didn 't make me feel like I was out hunting minocs , I 'd sleep better . The thing is so awkward and I keep getting tangled in the hose . I hate it . Anyway , so we 'll see how this works . I 'd love to have all of that wonderful oxygen at night so that I can b8 ) I wish I had more interesting stuff to talk about , but I 've only been home for 5 days and nothing of note has happened . : ) Posted by Josh dropped me off at the front ( Bye , Josh ) and I went in to find the right desk . Denver 's airport is HUGE , and my airline had a whole section just for themselves ! I initially went into the Online Check - In only line , so I had to finally ask someone where I was supposed to go . Luckily , they were able to point me in the right direction . I had no trouble with the actual check in , but when it came time to turn over my bag , the guy said it was 5 pounds overweight . Well , Josh had told me I might have to pay a fee for an overweight bag , so I asked if I could pay and they said it would be $ 100 . Wow . . . that 's just . . . wow . They also told me I could try and remove 5 pounds of stuff from my bag , so that 's what I tried to do . I had to open my suitcase in front of all of these strangers and dig stuff out . The lady said a pair of shoes and maybe some jeans would probably be fine , so I took out my jeans , my jacket and my brown sneakers . It wasn 't quite 5 pounds , but close enough . They allowed my bag through without a fee , but I was now loaded down with stuff and had no idea how I was going to get it on the plane with me . That was the thing that threw me off , I think . I had to figure out where to keep all of this new stuff that I hadn 't anticipated on carrying with me . I finally found a place to sit down and try to get organized . I could carry my jacket , I stuffed my jeans into my already full backpack - the resiliant Jans Sport that I carry everywhere - but I had no place to put the shoes ! I tried stuffing them into my bag , but it wouldn 't close . I carried them almost to the security line when I finally decided that I couldn 't juggle everything I had and still be able to get onto the plane . I threw my shoes away . I didn 't know what else to do ! I was already in a state of panic trying to navigate a totally new place , making sure I still had my tickets handy , grabbing my ID so I could get through security and all of that . . . I just felt the shoes were colateral damage of my already hurried state . I felt bad about doing it though . GraAmazingly , I made it through security with no problem and I struck out to find my gate . I was in B52 ( easy enough to remember ) but when I found it , it said the outgoing plane was going to Crested Butte ! Arrrgh ! I know I had read the board correctly , and my ticket said it was the right gate , but the plane wasn 't going home ! I tracked down a security guard and asked what I needed to do , and they said it was still the right plane . . . I was just really early . Phew . By this point I was able to sit down and try to reorganize my backpack again . I also realized that one of the reasons I 'd been freaking out was because I had forgotten to take my anti anxiety medication . If I 'm going to fly , I need to take it . I had no idea my anxiety for flying would start way before I was even at the gate ! So I bought some food I didn 't really want and I took my pill . After a while , I started feeling much less stressed . In fact , I started feeling downright sleepy . Also , in fact , I kept nodding off while sitting at the gate . I roused myself enough to get on the plane , but immediately started dozing off again . Our plane couldn 't take off on time because one of our flight attendants got sick and had to be replaced , but by the time we got into the air , I was going in and out of fuzzy consciousness . I was never fully asleep , but I wasn 't really awake either . It was unpleasant . When we finally landed , I was still in a drugged slump , so I was really glad Steve finally got there to help me ! I mean , I was glad to see him in general , but the helping was nice too . We stopped and got dinner ( I hadn 't eaten much yet that day ) and afterwards I crashed . It was only after I woke up and thought about it that I realized why I was so tired . The anti - anxiety pills make me sleepy sometimes , of course , but I had moved the ones I had in my purse into a packet where I keep Dramamine . One of my Dramamine had been smushed , and so the powder from it had gotten onto my other pill mixing the medication together . Nice . Anyway , I was glad to be home , but I was genuinely sad to leave . Barring my airport misadventure , I had the best time in Denver with Josh and I hope I can go back soon ! Yay ! We slept in a bit today since we were up late last night . It was nice to sleep a little longer , but Bella , Josh 's adorable , tailless manx cat , meowed me awake at an earlier hour than I thought was appropriate . That 's OK , though , because me and Bella have become good friends . She likes to play in my suitcase and chew on my shoes and hairbands . It wasn 't going to be a very intense day , since it 's my last full one in Denver . : ( Our first stop of the day was the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory ! I finally got to go ! : ) It was actually fun ! We learned a lot about the company and about how the stuff is made . I also found out that it is the only Celestial Tea factory in the world , so if you 've ever enjoyed a cup of Sleepytime , I 've been in the factory where it was made . We got to see the rooms where the ingredients are stored , and we survived the Mint Room ( very Willy Wonka , no ? ) , where the menthol will burn your face off if you are too sensitive to it . Josh , me , and only about three other people could stand to be in there for longer than a second . We had to wear hairnets for the whole tour which were tres sexy . After browsing in the shop a while , Josh decided we needed Indian food , and drove me up the mountains outside of Boulder to a place called Nederlands . The drive was absolutely gorgeous ! It wasn 't as pretty as Zion National Park , but it is a very close second to some of the most beautiful scenery I 've ever seen ! Also , it SNOWED on us on the way ! Snow ! In June ! I loved it ! : ) We stopped at a restaurant called Katmandu , which was a place Josh knew of from when he was in the Order . I 'd never had Indian food before , so I was a little scared , but it was sooooooooo gooooooood . I liked everything I had , except for this vegetable thing that about burnt my gizzard off from the spices . We also had proper Chai , which was delicious . We stuffed ourselves and then drove back down the mountain again . We went to the Pearl Street mall , which is where Jeoff and I had gone on Thursday . Apparently , Josh had never been , so I wanted tWe came back to Josh 's place and rested for a while before going back out again . For dinner , we went to Hamburger Mary 's , which has drag queens and fantastic burgers . We didn 't see any queens , but the burgers were there in full force . We had so much fun , but we finally had to go back so that I could pack . I have so much stuff to take home that trying to get it all in my suitcase will be a chore . Bleh . It was another great day in the Mile High City ! Josh and Jeoff took me to a parade ! I knew that there wasn 't a holiday or anything , so when I asked what the parade was for , they said it was for Denver Pride . I thought that was really awesome . I mean , it 's always the little towns that have a lot of civic pride , but you never see the big towns going through the trouble of having a parade , right ? We got up early so that we could have breakfast at a local bar called Charlie 's . Josh said it was a cowboy bar that doesn 't usually serve food , but on Denver Pride day , they have a buffet . We got there pretty early . There were a lot of men there , but only a few were cowboys . I also saw a man there dressed in leather short - shorts and some kind of weird leather strappy thing . Wow , that couldn 't ever be unseen . My guess was that he was on a float or something , because I can 't imagine anyone wearing a thing like that for fun . The parade started at about 9 : 30 am , and it was so much fun ! It was loud , and people were throwing beads , and everyone was waving these rainbow flags . I thought that was a nice touch , since Colorado calls itself " Colorful Colorado . " I guess that was a nod to the state slogan . There were a lot of beauty queens in this parade . I mean , A LOT . More queens than I 'd ever seen in any parade before , really . Honestly , though , I kind of thought that most of them were a little too made up . Lots of make up , big hair and the gaudiest dresses you 've ever seen . There was also a lot of men walking in the parade wearing skimpy bathing suits . I didn 't see a banner for them , but I guessed they must have been a city swim team or something because there were a whole lot them in the skimpy suits and not much else . That was weird . I mean , who wears speedos in a parade ? There were a lot of floats that had music playing really loud , and most of it was Lady Gaga stuff . You 'd think there would be more of a selection of music for a city parade , but I guess her music is really popular now . There were also a lot of people in costumes ! There were these women dressed as bikers and driving big motorcycles , there were men dressed up with these big feather things that spread out behind them and glitter on their faces , so I guess they were dressed as peacocks or something . There was a group of men that came by wearing the leather and stuff , like the guy I 'd seen earlier , but I didn 't get a chance to read the sign that they were holding . Maybe they were a cosplay group dressed as gladiators or something . There were politicians and church groups holding up signs that said " God Loves Everyone ! " and " Thank God You Were Born That Way ! " which I thought was great ! It 's nice when churches can get involved with city events , especially when they are promoting good self esteem . Probably the weirdest thing in the parade was a float that went by that had some men walking beside it , and they were throwing stuff in the crowd . I don 't actually think he meant to hiAfter the last float passed by , everyone followed the parade and walked down to a gigantic park by the state capitol building . It was SO full of people , I was a little overwhelmed . I 've never seen that many people all together in one place before . I found out later that there was over 300 , 000 people in the park at the same time . This was the second part of the Denver Pride event . There were food vendors , merchandise booths , booths for charities and things like that . We walked around the whole park and looked at everything . I was so glad to see that everyone was having so much fun being proud of Denver . It seemed to make everyone very happy to be there . There were lots of people holding hands and hugging . It was nice to see that the love for their city just seemed to bring everyone together . As I passed one of the booths , a man caught my arm and asked me a question . It was kind of loud , but I heard him say the word " straight . " Maybe he was asking for directions or something , but all I did was say " Yes , straight . " He grabbed me and gave me a big hug and kiss on the cheek and said he was so glad I was born the way I was and that I was being very supportive ! It was very sweet . : ) I 've never met anyone so excited about getting directions before ! I don 't know what the way I was born had to do with anything , but I 'm glad I could help him out . We stayed there for a while , got a snack and people watched for a while , but we had one more stop to make before we were done with the event . Josh told me we were going to a bar called The Wrangler to sit and grab a drink before going home . He told me there were bears in the bar and I kind of got worried at that . The building he pointed out didn 't look very big , and there were a lot of people around . I didn 't think it would be very safe to have bears inside with all of those people . I think he had just been joking with me , though , because there weren 't any bears inside at all ! All I saw were a lot of big , beefy dudes with beards and stuff . I met a lot of really nice guys inside , anWe finally headed home and Josh and I got cleaned up and changed clothes so we could go to Jeoff 's mother 's house for a cookout . I also finally got to meet Loanne , Jeoff 's best girlfriend . She was really sweet ! We had a lot of fun ! We ate , talked , laughed , and watched part of the Daytime Emmy Awards . Jeoff had to leave to head back down to his house in Lamar , so we all said goodbye and Josh and I came home and crashed . It was a very good day ! Josh had class in the morning , so Jeoff and I hung out around the house and did various thises and thats until Josh came back home . Actually , Jeoff was being industrious and doing his homework . I sat on the couch and dozed with the cat . : ) Josh left school early and we were on our way ! Our plan today was one of the things I 'd asked to do specifically while I was out here . We were going to drive to Estes Park and visit The Stanley Hotel ! Squee ! ! ! ! For those of you who aren 't Stephen King fans , The Stanley is a huge resort hotel up in the mountains where the book " The Shining " was created . Mr . King was living in Boulder in the 70 's and had just had a book rejected from his publisher . He decided that he needed to get away and try to think up a new story , so he and his wife drove to The Stanley and asked for a room . Since it was the end of the season , and the hotel staff was in the process of closing down the hotel for the winter , he and his wife were the only two guests in the hotel . Since the hotel is allegedly haunted , Mr . King was woken up by a nightmare and voila ! The Shining was born . This is how the tour guide explained it , so . . . I guess it must be right . The hotel is beautiful , old and huge , and has some of the most gorgeous scenery out of the front windows . You can see snow capped mountains , even in the summer ! Gah ! Loved it ! We were actually at the hotel for a ghost and history tour , which are very popular . We began our tour learning a bit about the history of the hotel and the family that started it , about why " The Shining " was written and how it affected the hotel itself . The tour guide was very excited , but I got the idea that she may have still been in the process of learning how to do the tours , because some of her stories were a bit disconnected . Anyway , we walked all over the hotel and saw most of the areas of the place that are supposed to be haunted . It was so much fun ! I love ghost tours ! It was especially cool because the hotel is so old and has a lot of interesting non - paranormal history behind it . I took lots of pictures , but I don 't think I caught any ghoolies , ghosties , or long - leggedy beasties . I tried to , though ! I really want to catch a ghost , darn it ! : ( I guess I 'm not " open " enough to the experience . Heh . Actually , I realized that a lot of the things the tour guide said and did were basically a way to plant suggestions into the minds of the people listening . Funnily enough , the guide said she was skeptical about the whole thing and that she knew that most stories DO plant suggestions into the listeners minds . . . and then she went on to do just that . Oh , the best part of the tour was when we were all standing in an empty bedroom on the " Children 's Floor " , trying to " feel the spirits of the children 's ghosts . " She asked us all to close our eyes and let our hands hang down to our sides . The ghosts of the children sometimes come and hold your hand , if they sense you work with kids or are around kids . So we were all doing this when some dude in the back freaked out and said something touched his hand . In my humble opinion , he was faking . I can 't explain why he would do it unless it had something to do with trying to startle everyone . Anyway , this Ok , so we 're all standing there , eyes closed , crammed into this hot bedroom , and had just been startled by the guy who said something touched his hand . It was really quiet when Jeoff secretly text messaged Josh and that giggle went off . Oh , y ' all , I bet there were some stained dainties in that room with us ! It even freaked out the tour guide ! I think we could have gotten away with it if Josh hadn 't laughed ! It was so funny . After that , the tour wound down and we went on our way . I very much want to go back and do one of their Ghost Hunting events , and if I can 't do that , I want to stay in one of the haunted rooms ! The whole thing was so awesome ! After the hotel , we went down into Estes Park and walked along the strip of souvenir shops and restaurants . I love doing that , because you can just go in and out and shop and loiter and do whatever . We each bought a few things , and Jeoff and Josh did a wine tasting . It was fun to watch , but I just simply don 't enjoy wine , so I had to live vicariously . We had dinner at one of the local places , which had delicious food , and then we said our goodbyes to Estes Park and came home . Josh , Jeoff and I drove to an apartment complex to pick up Joel , one of their friends . He was having some work done on his car , so Josh took Joel to have that done and I was once again left me in Jeoff 's capable hands . Since they had invited some friends over for a get together , we went to King Supers and picked up food for the party . We brought everything home and put it away and then just hung out and watched CNN news for a while . Jeoff and I made fun of people that were being reported , which was a lot of fun ! We thought that Josh would be back soon , but time just kept spinning out . Since we had waited so long and hadn 't eaten , we finally just jumped in the car and went out to Earl 's Sandwich Shop , which has some AMAZING sandwiches ! Unfortunately , the shop was closing , so we got our sammies to go and drove back to Joel 's apartment and ate there . We left and went to a gigantic liquor store to pick up some wine for the party . I 'd never seen anything like this place before . It was huge ! It was like a Wal - Mart for alcoholics or something . I 've never seen a liquor store where people had shopping lists ! They also had shopping carts ! There was so very much alcohol . I enjoyed walking around and looking at the bottles and labels . I believe that there are a lot of beautiful bottle and label designs for alcohol , so even though I wasn 't interested in buying anything , I still enjoyed looking . I got carded because I was with people who were buying wine . Since my I . D . is from out of state , it gets looked at much more closely . Of course , for some reason people out here think I 'm much , much younger than I really am too , but I 'm not going to complain about that ! We finally got home and started getting ready for the party ! I employed my culinary talents to cut up veggies for a tray , and everyone else did the hard stuff . The people who came over were predominately Jeoff 's friends , and they were all really nice ! The guests kind of came in two waves , so we almost had two separate parties . It was fun , though . I met a lot of great peoI did have one unfortunate moment when someone asked me where I was from . When I said Huntsville , she immediately said " Huntsville ? That 's where Antoine Dotson is from , right ? ! " Seriously , people in my town sent humans to the moon , but when you say Huntsville , all they can think of is that guy . Oy Freaking Vey . Now we 're all so exhausted , so I 'm about to head off to bed ! Tomorrow is another adventure ! Today we slept in a bit and then Josh and I got ready to go get mani - pedis . Yeah , I 've never called them that before , but that is what we were going to do ! There is a beauty college a little bit from here , and they were having a special , plus my feet looked awful . They weren 't looking so hot while I was at home , but once I spent the day in the dry climate , I had hobbit feet , so I 'm glad we did this . Believe it or not , the girl didn 't tickle me very much at all . I warned her that I was severely ticklish , so I think she was being careful so that I wouldn 't kick her in the face . : ) She was a newish student , so she was doing everything really slowly , so we ended up staying there far longer than we thought we would . Josh had a job interview later in the day , so he had to go and run errands while I was still in the chair . I finally got done , and unfortunately , Josh 's interview time was looming quite closely and the traffic snarled up at the worst moment . We inched down the street , and finally had to cut through some neighborhoods to get back on the interstate ! Josh was driving like a bat out of hell , and I was praying we wouldn 't end up smeared on a guard rail ! We got home in just enough time for me to try and print out his paperwork ( we 'd had printer issues earlier in the day and had to get a new ink cartridge while we were out ) while he jumped in the shower and got dressed . Luckily he made it out in just enough time to get to his interview with a minute or two to spare ! Score ! : ) At that point I was in Jeoff 's hands , and he took me to Boulder , which is about 30 to 45 minutes from Denver . I loved Boulder ! It was so beautiful and had streets lined with independent shops and restaurants ! It also had aggressive non - profit workers who jumped on us first thing , but Jeoff knew how to handle them ! We walked , talked and browsed through interesting shops and had a lot of fun ! Well , I had a lot of fun , so I hope Jeoff wasn 't bored out of his mind . He was nice enough to pretend he was having fun at least ! We had lunch at the Boulder Cafe , and the food was wonderful . When we got the check , the people had given us a " Happy Discount " on our bill . We thought that was awesome ! It is probably something they do for everyone , but I choose to believe it was because we were laughing so much ! We walked a bit more , but we were kind of on a deadline , and Jeoff 's knee still isn 't so great , so we left Boulder , ran a couple of errands , and came home . Boulder is just lovely . I 'd only read about it in The Stand , so it was totally different than I had pictured it in my head , and I loved it . To borrow a phrase from Josh , " I could totally live there ! " Once Josh got back from school , we went out to get Pho , which is a noodle soup that you add all kinds of stuff to . It was delish , of course , even though I had trouble eating it . I had a spoon , a fork and chopsticks , and I still couldn 't get things out of the bowl without getting it all over myself . We also had bubble tea , like the kind I had tried making a couple of months ago , but it was so much better than my version ! NOM ! We had planned to go play trivia at a local pub , but we ended up being too late to participate , so they took me to a cute little bar called " Double Daughters " for something called a " Teddy Bear Orgy " which is some kind of martini with gummy bears in it . I broke my no drinking rule since Josh wanted me to have one of those specifically ! It tasted like Hawaiian Punch with vodka in it . I had two . Luckily , I didn 't embarrass myself or my two dates , and we had a really fun time talking with each other and with one of the club DJs , whose name was Craig . He was excited to hear I was from Alabama , because his boyfriend was from Alabama , so I had to tell him about Huntsville and where it was in relation to where his boyfriend was from . Also , he tried to talk me into moving to Denver and told me all about where Steve could get work in IT and where the best places to buy a home and stuff are around here . They almost have me talked into it I think ! Don 't tell Steve ! Once we got home , we sat around and talked for a while , and I remembered why I don 't want to drink anymore ( not badly , just enough to remind me ) and I went to bed . Good times , noodle salad . : ) Wow , I think this is the most travel blogging I 've ever done in a span of 6 months before ! I woke up this morning at an ungodly hour and headed to the airport ! I finally took my long awaited trip to visit Josh ! Yay ! I 've been telling him I 'd come and visit him in Denver for the longest time , but one thing and another was keeping me from going . Finally , I just bit the bullet and bought a plane ticket ! I 'm so glad I did ! : ) The flight was early , but really kind of uneventful . I paid a bit extra to get a seat in something called Economy Plus , which seems to be the section of the plane where the seats aren 't smashed up against each other . Luckily , no one had bought the seat beside me , so I was able to stretch out a little bit . My only problem was the kid behind me kept kicking my seat , but I didn 't think reaching behind me and ripping off his tibia would go over too well with his parents , so I endured it . : ) When we began our landing approach , I had a bad moment of thinking something was really wrong and we were going to have to land in a field or something because I could NOT see the airport ! However , I was just in a weird section of the plane , I guess , because the airport was there and it was HUGE . After I landed and got my bags , Josh picked me up in the Chick Magnet and we drove towards his new place ! I love his house a lot ! It is in a section of Denver that is being gentrified , and I think it may be a remodeled tenement house , but it is gorgeous ! It 's urban and kind of hip without being pretentious ! Just like Josh ! Heehee . After I got settled and changed into cooler clothes ( Denver is really hot ) he took me on a whirlwind , and if you know how Josh drives that isn 't too far from the truth , driving tour through the city . We were going to go on a walk down the 16th street mall , which is a long street lined with shops and restaurants , street performers and non - profit workers who jump on your face and ask for money . They were nice people , but hell if I 'm going to hand over my credit card information to people standing on a street corner . Yikes . Josh tried to kill me right off my making me walk up a flight of stairs . It wasn 't even a big flight , really , but carp , it was hard to do . Denver is at such a high elevation that I couldn 't fricking breathe as I climbed . By the time we got to the top , I almost passed out ! However , I managed to make it , thank goodness . We walked and talked and had a really great time catching up ! We didn 't go into many stores , but we did eat gelato as we walked and it was very nice . After that , we made a run to the grocery store for staples and the makings of an al fresco dinner out on his lanai ( it 's probably not called a lanai here , but we 're playing Golden Girls this week ) . After that we took it easy and waited on Jeoff to come in from Lamar . It 's a long drive , and the poor guy has a bum knee from falling down the stairs , so we just relaxed and talked until we decided to go to bed . I 'm so glad I came ! : ) 1 ) You know , I realize I should have ended my story about traveling out west with a bang , but the last couple of days of our trip were a bit anticlimactic . We drove back to Las Vegas , hung out in a giant electronic store called " Fry 's " for a while , found our hotel , ordered in very generous portions of food from a local Italian restaurant , and watched TV . Our return flight was at an ungodly early hour , so we only slept for a while before getting up and heading back to the airport . The pill I take to keep from freaking out when I fly put me to sleep before we got out off of the runway , so I missed the exciting take off portion of the trip . In conclusion , we had a really great time , so I 'm glad we got to go on our wild west adventure ! ! You guys should totally go out there . Anyways , I 'm very happy for them both ! Congrats ! May your lives be happy , your in - laws be tolerable , and your wedding cake NOT end up on Cake Wrecks ! 3 ) Last week , Steve was gone on a business trip , so I was alone and doing my own thing . You 'd think since I 'm doing the housewifey bit right now , it wouldn 't change my daily schedule too much when he 's out of town . However , if he 's not here and I don 't have to make dinner at any certain time or make sure he 's got clean pants or whatever it is that I 'm supposed to be doing , I just throw everything to the winds and do what I want . It 's my chance to watch what I want on TV , have meals when I feel like it , and walk around with no pants on if that 's what I want to do . : ) While he was gone , I got into the habit of watching the ID ( Investigation Discovery ) channel . I didn 't seek that channel out on purpose , but I turned it on for background noise and got interested . If you aren 't familiar with the ID channel , it 's basically the channel with shows about true crime , murders , and forensics . I 'll be honest , it isn 't the best channel to watch if you 're home alone . Especially when most of the shows begin with shots of blurred crime scene photos with a voice over saying something like " The Hoboken Ax Fiend crept into her house while she was alone , murdered her with his dull blade , and violated her mutilated corpse . " Yeah . . . nightmare fuel , but it was morbidly fascinating . I slept with many weapons that week . Probably none of them would have been useful in a real situation , but they made me feel safe ! 4 ) Speaking of the ID channel , I watched a lot of shows where the spouse or parent of the victim was charged with the murder . Now , I 'm sure some of them were actually guilty of what they were accused of , and I 'm sure that the juries who decided the outcomes heard a lot more evidence of what was going on than what the television showed , but some of the trials where people were sentenced to death or life in prison seemed to leave lots of room for doubt in whether or not the people were actually guilty . One of the things I noticed over and over again was that the detectives , police , and jury members would say " Well , I felt they were gPeople react differently in times of stress and grief , right ? I 'd probably be doomed if I was in that situation , because I don 't think I behave in what is - apparently - the " right " way when I 'm sad . I hate crying , or even seeming upset , in front of other people . So even when things are very bad , I try hard not to cry and I kind of get goofy and make inappropriate jokes and laugh at stupid things . When I 'm finally alone , I cram myself into the smallest place I can find and cry till I get a nose bleed . That 's just how I deal with really bad things . If anyone saw me , or questioned me , before I got to cram myself into a small place , they 'd probably think I had something to do with it . That 's a scary thought ! 5 ) I 'm supposed to be helping with VBS again this year , but I have no idea what is going on yet . I mean , I know I 'm running the sound board and taking pictures like last year , but I know I 'm supposed to be doing other stuff as well and I haven 't been told anything yet . That makes me nervous ! I like to be mentally prepared ! Boo . |
The year is almost over , dum dum dum , but more importantly , an era in my very exciting life is also over . My teenage years . As of tomorrow , I 've walked ( minus like 1 , 5 / 2 years before I learned how to walk ) this earth 's surface for 20 years ! And it is insanely exciting , yet a bit scary . I can finally say goodbye to teenage angst ( not that I had any ) and embrace my ahem , maturity . My favourite part of becoming 19 was that , whenever I faced a million stairs and was tired as hell when I reached the top , I could say " You can talk , but I 'm no longer as young as 18 ! I 'm getting old ! " Now I do actually feel very old . It 's scary to think that ten years from now , I 'll be 30 , shock horror ! Nah , I 'm actually glad that my teenage years are over . They weren 't the most fun of times . I guess I 'm not the only one who faces these issues , like bullying and feeling so insecure about yourself you 'd rather leave the house for as long as possible . I already feel like I 'm growing and I accept myself more as I am . Which is a good thing , I guess . Also I 'm happy that it 's not like the old days , my parents go on about . Married and children plus a mortgage at 22 . No thanks , I 'd rather enjoy myself while I still can . I 'm excited ! I don 't like thunder . I especially don 't like thunder at night , when I 'm trying to get my well - deserved beauty sleep , but instead am being drilled out of bed by flashes of light and loud noises . Like last night . It felt like the apocalypse was coming . I feared that cockroaches at last had found a way to mutate themselves into massive monsters , showing off their clever technology with lots of shenanigans , before they would come and eat my brains . It could happen you know . Never trust a cockroach ! That 's what Fairly Odd Parents taught me . Luckily , I 'm not the only one who believes the end is near whenever there is just a little bit of thunder . Freddie Mercury was with me . I imagine him in his oversized London mansion , writing Bohemian Rhapsody , getting all emotional about mamas and not wanting to be born and shit , when suddenly hell breaks loose and thunder is coming down like a mofo . After screaming for his mama oooeeeeh once again , who for the record was not at home at that time , he finally wrote the legendary line : Thunderbolts and lightning , very very frightening me . Then he gets into the whole Galileo business , which I think should have been changed to : Marco POLO , Marco POLO , Marco POLO , here we go ! But then again , there 's a reason I am not a successful songwriter , so I will let Freddie have this one . Then he gets all emotional and pities himself before he starts talking about devils and stuff , while the thunder is still raging . Freddie was so sick of it , he jumped up , while Brian May jumped out of a random vase and starts jamming the guitar , while Freddie is all : SO YOU THINK YOU CAN STONE ME AND SPIT IN MY EEEEEYEE ! When he realises the thunder doesn 't give a flying fuck , he realises he has to get out , and so he runs to an open field and lays down , because that is totally what my elementary school teacher told me to do whenever thunder was being a bitch . That was of course before I knew thunder can actually kill you . Since I believe I am too young and awesome to die as of yet , I dislike thunder . And that 's how it is people . I watched a tv - show today and one of their items was about a 10 year old girl posing in a provocative way for the French Vogue . The girl in question was Thylane Lena - Rose Blondeau , a daughter of a football player and a ' whatever she does ' mother . Usually I am quite careful with judging something before seeing it . After all , the media likes to blow things up . When I saw the pictures though , I have to admit that even I think these pictures go a bit too far . No matter how you try to defend it , this is way too young to pose in such a provocative way for any 10 year old . And yes , she is a gorgeous little girl , but isn 't that what she deserves to be ? A little girl ? Why is it necessary to take away the childhood of these children and forcing them to mature before they are even teens ? Also , it seems to me that pedophiles might have a little party in their pants right now . These pictures must be their wet dream . They might come to the understanding that , if a leading fashion magazine is allowed to publish these kind of pictures , there is nothing wrong with them owning child pornography . Where do we stop this madness ? When do we realize that this girl should be playing with barbies instead of being a model ? I remember watching a television show called ' Toddlers and Tiaras ' . It was disgraceful . The mothers were convinced that they were just doing their daughters a favour , but you can 't make me believe that a 7 year old is happy being a living doll , parading around on stage and being judged by adults just on the way they look . These kind of things will only make young girls believe they have to look perfect . This will have side effects like an increase in eating disorders . It was bad enough that older girls already had to suffer from the distorted image the media shows us every single day . I have a niece who is almost 2 years old . She 's a beautiful little girl and yes , already quite vain and fond of my high heels . I just hope she won 't have to grow up to soon . She should enjoy life without any worries before she will face the difficulties of the adult world . Yes yes yes ! Finally I shall enlighten you with a post about Porto ! I knew you 've been waiting for this moment . It is finally here ! PIZZA PARTY ! Once again it was ridiculous o ' clock when we had to get down to our taxi . We were brought to the airport by a nice Spanish taxi driver . All of us were quite moody , irritable and the fact that we had to wait in line for long did not add up to the good mood . When we finally went through the security check , we had another freaking expensive breakfast before queueing for our flight . A little example of what we looked like : The flight itself was nothing spectacular . Although I did demand myself to stay awake . I only managed to be able to do this at some points . But , while the other two were asleep and we were flying over Porto , I could see the festival from the window and I got over - excited . We decided to get a taxi , as soon as we had collected all of our stuff . And so we did . We happened to get into a taxi with a nice taxi driver and for the moment , we shall call him Pedro . Why ? Because I can ! Pedro was interested in our motives to visit Porto . We told him we were going to the festival . He asked us if we were going to see Skunk Anansie . We told him we were there for Mika . There was a short pause . There was a problem with the hotel though . They did not speak English . The problem with this was that , the moment the lady started rambling in Portuguese , we were quite confused . When she threw our bags in a cupboard , we were even more confused . Laura thought it meant someone else was still sleeping in our room , and so we decided to just go out and walk around the city and more importantly , look for a cinema . We discovered there were no cinemas in the city centre . We had to take the metro to some distant place somewhere in no man 's land . At last , we managed to find the shopping centre , next to the football stadium . It was quite pretty , but we just wanted to get tickets to see Harry Potter ! After a nice long sleep , we met up with Kath , Abby , Treasa and Sharon to go on a lovely rivercruise . We bought our tickets at the tourist shop and headed down to the river . We were just casually chilling and chatting when suddenly everybody started screaming . Naturally , I screamed along , even though I had no clue why . Turns out Laura had been shat on by a bird . She wasn 't happy . We just laughed . The captain of the ship helped her and told her it was good luck . Laura wasn 't convinced . It was fun fun fun . Later , the same nice captain refused to let us on the ship , because we had to get real tickets or whatever it was about . All sumpathy for him was lost at that point . We are dedicated queuers after all and to see everyone get in apart from us is not so nice . After this jolly boat trip , we decided to go for some lunch . It was quite difficult to find a suitable place , as one restaurant denied us ( what do you mean recession ? ) because we were with 7 people . We kept walking and decided to sit down at this reasonably nice looking place . Our waiter , let 's call him Winky , thought it was necessary to wink whenever he moved or whenever we or he spoke . It was quite frightening . It took a while before our dinner was served . I decided I wanted to use the toilet and asked Winky where it was . He , how is it possible , winked at me and told me to follow him . I reluctantly did . He told me to go through the dark alley , one of those you often see in gangsta films . I looked at him as if he was quite nuts . He winked at me . I ventured out into the alley , and saw the green chairs he described . There was a man at the door where I had to enter , so I just said Ola and he stepped aside . It was the kitchen of the restaurant . Everyone looked at me as if I was some sort of alien . I decided it was best to quickly do my business , then leave . You never know what they can do with a butcher 's knife . I almost ran back , sat down and ate my food . The waiters were very impatient . They removed our dishes before everyone was finished . Needless to say , no tip for them ! We then went to some plaza with a statue to meet up with the other MFCers . When we arrived , Chloe and her mum were already there . We chatted for a bit and more and more people arrived . I knew it was going to be fun the next day , since everyone was very lovely and nice and funny . I especially remember the American girls ya 'll and of course the fantabulous Mary who is fantastic and my secret lover Rosa , who is awessssommme ! But everyone was really nice and lovely of course ! Also all the old faces I got to meet again . The plan was to go to the mall , but first we passed a partystore to buy red hairspray for our little practical joke . Everyone who reads this blog will probably have seen Mika 's red streak . He hated it and so we decided to make fun of it by all showing up with red streaks in our hair . The mall was next and we all kind of spread and had dinner . Then we discussed the plan for the next day and decided to kick everyone who started a list in the nuts . All was well and we all went back to our hotels . I decided to go earlier than the others and met up with Mary at the same statue . We had heard there were already people there who started the numbers and so basically shit was going down . We met up with the Spanish crew and made our way down to the festival . With Eye of the Tiger playing in our heads , we marched to the group sitting there and told them numbers were a no go . Many started to remove their numbers , but some clinged on to the idea that it was going to happen . It took them 3 security guards to let them know otherwise . When the doors opened , it was as if we had to run a marathon . I couldn 't go too fast because of my damned shoes . We had to wait at a second barrier and I decided to take them off . Security told me to put them back on again . The second barrier opened and I ran as if the end of the world was near , lost my shoes , had to go back to grab them , ran barefoot over stones and my feet were very hurt . They still hurt to this day . But I kept going like a boss and ended up at the left side , in between total strangers who wanted to get rid of me . I texted Laura and she told me to come over to the right side where all the cool people were . I stood behind Rose , because she is so tiny I could easily see everything . We had KFC , talked and laughed and had fun until the first act came on stage . Then the Tindersticks came on . At this point it was raining . We were wet . Let me describe this experience : If you 'd like to torture someone for whatever reason , put them in a giant freezer , keep pouring buckets of cold water over them and make them listen to the complete discography of the Tindersticks . I assure you that word peace is close with this method . And yes , they weren 't the band for a festival like this . But seriously , the man 's voice was torture to listen too for more than 2 songs . When they also demanded the audience to shut up for a whole song , we were even more pissed than before . The Cranberries were really good , even though they played for too long . Had we not been cold and tired and hurt and broken , I would have enjoyed it even more . But at least they were a plaster on the tindersticks wound . Then , after a long stage preparation ( no , it does not work to put up giant paintings when there is a strong wind ) , Mika finally came on . The gig was good , although he did not seem to be as into it as he was in Liege . First 2 songs his eyes were closed and there was barely any eye contact with the audience . The gig was still good though , although I think he was tired . Imma was on fire as always , as was the rest of the band , but I couldn 't clearly see them . I did miss Ida though ! After the show , the whole crew of us went to the parking lot to wait for him to come out . It didn 't take too long for him . But it was a disaster in my eyes . Instead of lining up , which would have been more convenient , people mobbed him and yelled his name and kept shoving pens and pictures in his face . It wasn 't a nice thing to see . I lingered around for a while , but I did not attempt to get close as I refused to mob him . I just went back to where Kath was standing , at a nice distance and I was disgusted as he tried to get away but nobody let him . On Sunday , we just slept most of the time and went out to have dinner . We had a typical Portuguese dish which my stomach could hardly digest . Never again . We then went back and rested a bit . I had an early flight so I slept some more , only to wake up at 3 am . I got ready , woke everybody up and said goodbye . I went down and had the taxi driver already waiting for me . He did not speak English . So it was all sign language . Also , at 4 am , there was nobody on the road . So the taxi driver drove as if we were in the Fast & the Furious . I feared for my life . Eventually , we arrived at the airport and I found out there was no life there at all . All the lights were out , people sleeping on benches . It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen . I waited for a long time , checked in , went through security and sat down at the gate with a smelly woman next to me , who tortured me with her smell for the rest of the trip ( she also sat in front of me on the plane ) . I want to thank everyone who I 've met and met again for a great trip I will always remember . Of course , also my Dream Team for travelling with me and sharing the good and the less good times . Until next time ! See ya ! Let me tell you , trains in Belgium are weird . First they spoke French , but then suddenly they changed to Dutch . I didn 't mind , but I think it can be confusing . When we were finally in Brussels , the initial plan was to walk around the city before heading off to the airport , but decided it was better not to . We went down to buy tickets to the airport , but the man at the counter was having his period . I could tell he spoke Dutch by his English accent , so I took over from Laura and spoke Dutch to him . He was one nasty bitch and quite rude . We just took our tickets and off we went again . It took a while , a bustrip with screaming kids ( who would later accompany us in the plane ) and overpriced drinks before we could fly to Madrid for a short stop in our tour . We didn 't get to sit next to each other , but that was ok . We were far too tired anyway . The flight was not spectacular , apart from Laura controlling the still screaming kids with her telepatic powers . She made one of the kids bump his head . That 's how she rolls . We arrived in Madrid at night , went to the metro , had to carry our bags over a shitload of stairs . Seriously Madrid , would it be so difficult to install lifts in your metro stations for poor tourists like us ? The mood was not uplifting when we had to face another obstacle in our way to fresh air , condemned to carrying our bags . At last , we managed to find the right stop and went upstairs once again to find our hostel . This happened to be a bit of a challenge . After first walking the wrong way , we decided to go all the way back . It was already dark , we were tired and if anyone had mugged us that night , I would have slapped a bitch . Patience is a virtue and we finally found our hostel . It was quite nice , the people were nice and they had free wi - fi ! We went up to our room and there were 3 beds . I drew a map for you : Laura and I immediately claimed the beds in the middle of the room , forcing Luke to take the one opposite the door . He was not happy . You see , he feared the big men walking around the hostel would come and steal him away from us . Or eat him . Or tickle him to death . Anyway , he was not a happy camper . And threw a bitchfit . And we just laughed . And he had to sleep there . We attempted to watch Harry Potter . We fell asleep . Luke was woken up by the cleaners who wanted to clean our room . Luke thought he was going to be kidnapped . Anyway , we got out too late and just went to the Playa Mayor and had some overpriced lunch which wasn 't even that good . We then walked around and went shopping . Yes we did . We gave Mr . Donegan a make - over . Even a new eau de toilette . The Secret by Antonio Banderas . It made him feel invincible . After we did the make over we went to this lovely restaurant with even lovelier staff . Especially one guy . We shall call him Guadicimo . Guadicimo was a handsome Spanish guy . And nice too . And the food was lovely . So we gave him a 5 euro tip . He acted as if he had just won the lottery and Penelope Cruz had come in naked to tell him . We left and went back to the hostel , glad we did such a good deed for such a hardworking , good - looking , eager Spanish boy . And we slept . We slept a lot . Basically we did not wake up and got ready until around dinner time . We had dinner in a lovely little Spanish restaurant where they did not speak English . Their cod was lovely . I want to go back there and marry them as it was the best thing I tasted in quite a while . After finishing our meal , we walked around a bit more , had some ice cream and headed back to the hostel as the next morning we had an early flight to Porto . People die every single day . Basically we live to die eventually . We all know it . Some accept it and some refuse to deal with this fact . I was going to write a report about Porto , but it will have to wait , especially after all the tragedies . I think about death a lot . Sometimes I am scared of it . Sometimes I tend to accept it . Truth be told , it gets harder every single day to live in this world . I 'm not saying that it used to be better . I just think we 've reached the point where the Third World War is going on , yet nobody dares to announce it yet . People die of famine . Of poverty . Of loneliness . We do not pay attention to this every single day . The situation is out of our control and even if we try to solve it , we can 't . Not alone . Not if the richest people keep all their wealth to themselves . Norway had always been a peaceful country . This shows that there only has to be 1 person with strong beliefs , 1 person who is sick in his head to destroy everything . I 've been following the news on this for a while now and even looking at his picture gives me chills . It 's in his eyes . We do not accept each other any more . Does it really matter where someone else is from ? Does it really matter what someone else believes ? Is it worth killing another living being because it convinces you that you are doing the right thing ? It 's a sick world we are living in . But I know that it might get better . The good always overpowers the bad . All the boats of independent people sailing to the island to get those kids out of the water , while being at risk to be shot themselves . It shows there are still enough people who do have good in their hearts . " Love is stronger than death even though it can 't stop death from happening , but no matter how hard death tries it can 't separate people from love . It can 't take away our memories either . In the end , life is stronger than death . " On the death of Amy Winehouse , all I 'd like to say is that it is such a shame . She seemed so lost lately and it is so sad nobody could help her . I almost lost someone very close to me due to drugs so I 've seen up close what she was going through . I hope she is free now . I know this blog was just an endless ramble of things , but I just wanted to share some thoughts . Right , now I should write that report for Porto . Immediately after Mr . Penniman and gang had left the building , we went to the car because we foolishly decided it was a fantastic idea to drive to Liege overnight . Let me assure you this is not a good idea . Although Donegan and myself fell asleep during the drive , it was Laura who had to keep Niko awake , before we would have a tragic crash and die in the Neverland of France . Especially the last 30 minutes were hard for both him and Laura . Laura just kept talking and I think she was so tired it was mainly bullshit . A memorable quote : " You know that Mika flooded his bathroom ? " That 's right Mika , she is psychic . Now get those towels ready ! After what seemed like ages but was only 3 hours , we arrived at our hotel . I felt like shit , I was tired and grumpy . What did make me happier was the fact that the Holiday Inn we originally booked a room at , now was changed into a 4 star hotel . YAH FOR UPGRADES ! Sleeping was so nice and I felt good when I woke up . We decided to get brunch and went to a supermarket . I also bought razors . I forgot mine at home , which basically meant that after 4 days of not shaving , I felt like King Kong 's sister . At that moment I was in such a state of bliss , I didn 't even care about the festival anymore . A delightful lunch later , I had a date with my razors in the bathroom , Luke and Laura went for a swim and Niko slept some more . I have never felt so refreshed when I was ready with my shower . I did my make - up , we all prepared some more and around 6 we headed down to the festival . We arrived at the festival and had to find our parking lot which took quite some time . We then went into the shuttle bus and were dropped off at the entrance . The lovely lady who checked our tickets said my top was " tres magnifique " . I was about to high - five her . We immediately went to the main stage . It was around 7 now . I just walked round the sides and surprisingly enough we could just walk to the front row . It was AMAZING . Especially after the whole Compiegne disaster , this was a real treat . We were chatting about how lucky we were , when Niko said he had to go back to the car to sleep some more , but he promised us he would be back by 10 . We were still in awe about how lucky we were , but then the inevitable happened . We had been there for more than an hour , sitting down to chill some more , when a big French Lady just sat down on Laura 's bag . Laura immediately stood up , demanding the woman to get off her back and she tried to secure her spot . The French lady at her turn demanded Laura to move as she had been there since 3 . Her husband who had been there all along never spoke a word . Both of them stood up and the lady kept saying : Laura immediately called security and explained what was going on . The lady tried to get security to remove us , but they just shrugged and went away . 1 - 0 for team Laura ! In the meantime , Luke was silent , afraid we would get kicked out . We weren 't . The punchline is that in fact , there was enough room for all of us to stand in the front row . After security were gone , the woman did not say a single thing any more . Then fiiinalllly , Mika came on ! And boy was he on fire ! It was waaay better than Compiegne , although Compiegne was also quite good . We danced our asses off and had the best time ever ! This was probably my favourite gig out of all 3 we did this tour . He was smiling and seemed so happy and it just rocked my socks off . Even though I wasn 't wearing any . We decided to wait for him after the gig . So we got our pretty asses over to the VIP parking . We weren 't the only ones . Around 60 people were waiting . Then it got later . And later . And even later than later . So a lot of people left . By the time it was 4 in the morning , there were only around 29 people left and he FINALLY came out . It was quite endearing to see . He pushed everybody out of his way to get out of the car , even crawled over them when it didn 't go fast enough . The first thing he said to Laura and me was : He stuck around for a few minutes , chatting and swearing like a sailor ( in a positive way of course ) and he did a video for Mikafans . net after we managed to get a working camera ( mine didn 't work . Which made him say : " Sort your shit out ! How many fucking hours did you have to prepare ? " ) Now I warn you this is not the full group picture . This is the one with the 4 of us . But considering there have been some people angry about this cropped version , I thought I would just mention it . We were the lucky ones . Lucky to have had the chance to experience such a good meet & greet . And then to think we thought Liege would be the mediocre gig . Absolutely not ! We went to bed quite satisfied , yet the trip did not end there yet ! I woke up in the morning , not feeling quite like P . Diddy . After little sleep , I had to get up and go to the airport to pick up Luke . Him and Niko would come over to my place that day , so we could leave for France the next day , together with Laura . It was 10 am when I arrived at the airport , although it seemed like I had to wait a million years for the bitch to come out . When he finally did , he had some vague excuse about Mexicans and tacos . Anyway , he was there and we could get our asses back to Casa Ingridia . After settling down , we decided to go to the supermarket to get some food for our journey . It seemed like Luke had a hard time adjusting to the Dutchness of my country and he was often quite scared and in panic whenever someone spoke Dutch to him . Needless to say , I had to jump to the rescue several times . After quite a while ( he said he would arrive at 2 . It was around 5 ) Niko finally arrived . I showcased some of my fantastic cooking skills , although the boys were reluctant to try it . I know I should be in Master Chef , now they do too ! We then went out to see Bad Teacher , which was cool and then back home and off to bed because we had another early mornin ' ! Got up , got dressed and we were on our way to the airport once again . This time to pick up Laura , who already called us to ask us where the fuck we were . After we collected her , we could finally start our journey to Compiegne ! See , we had only decided a week before to go to Compiegne a day before the gig instead of on the day itself , so we were condemned to the only hotel available . Thing is , it was nowhere to be found . We drove around for ages , even breaking all rules ( damn the amount of one way roads ! ) . Laura asked people in her best French where the damn place was , but nobody seemed to know . It wasn 't until Luke and Laura decided to look for it by foot , we finally found it . It turned out to be quite a nice place , very appartment like and we even had stairs ! Yeah that 's right ! Naturally the upstairs room was claimed by Niko and myself . After chilling for a bit , and me finding out I passed my last resit , we went out into the city to meet up with Rose , Treasa and Sharon . It wasn 't hard to find their hotel , yet it took a while for them to get out . When they did , we went down to the Palace where the gig was going to take place the next day . They were already building the stage and we curiously looked around . We weren 't the only one . Everywhere , groups of Mika Fans were gathered around , looking or talking to the organisation . After a while , we decided we 'd seen enough and went somewhere to get drinks and food . When we were done , Rose and the others went back to the Palace and our little group headed back to our hotel to sleep . At 5 . 30 Niko woke me up . He just received a text that said there were 15 people there already . Then he checked the time it was sent . 2 fucking am . Not much later he received another text . Almost 70 people . And it was not even 6 o ' clock yet . I think I 've never sworn as much in my life as I did that morning . We got dressed , did hair and make - up and went down there . We arrived at around 7 , where we got number 82 , 83 , 84 and 85 . Funny thing is , there weren 't even 80 people around . Apparently , most just got a number and went back to bed . Which is unfair . It also started raining . It did not make us happy people . Luckily , I met many great people in the queue , so we at least had some fun considering the circumstances . The more people arrived , the more hectic it became . Security promised to do the number system , but as they were late with opening the doors , they did not . So there was a lot of screaming . And anger . And a whole lot of frustration . Eventually , Niko and I ended up on the right side of stage , second row . Initially I had some girl in front of me , but I switched with Niko as he had no room to stand because the man in front of him was not adjusted to gig etiquette . I ended up standing next to a very cute French guy , offered him water . He refused though . Although he did ask me later if I wanted a bottle of water . I refused . That 's how we roll . The moment the band came on stage , I already forgot about everything . The first notes of Relax brought back the goosebumps and I screamed like never before . The man in front of me gave me a WTF look but I didn 't care . Then Mika came on stage . And I danced . I danced like never before . The man in front of me kept giving me sympathy looks , sometimes even annoyed looks but I didn 't give a fuck . The guy next to me barely moved . I did . I don 't go to gigs to just stare and go home . I go because I want to dance . And I don 't care what others think about it . When the gig ended , I was covered in sweat . It was a great feeling for a change . Niko and I went to look for our friends and together we decided to wait for Mika to come out . It was quite clear we weren 't the only one who had this idea . I think more than 200 people were waiting . It was impossible to get closer , but I had the Fairytales Before Dark book I wanted to give him . People mobbed the door of where he was staying , it was a crazy mess . After a while , he came out and I looked for a spot where I could just hand it to him . I found some short Frenchies and I managed to get myself in between them . I waited for him to come to us and when he did , I tried to hand him the book . He initially wanted to sign it , but I told him it was for him and he took it , quickly looked at it and promised to look at it later . Then he looked up and recognised me and said ooh hi ! I said hi back , but everyone just kept screaming his name , so I walked away . Mission completed . For those of you who don 't know anything about the film , it was originally a stage production , in 1975 I believe , before being converted to the screen . It 's about a couple , Brad and Janet , who get car trouble and seek refuge in an old scary castle , only to be greeted by aliens and in particular Dr . Frank ' N Furter , who is a transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transsylvania . He created a perfect human , the blonde Rocky and that is the start of a series of weird events . The plot isn 't very layered and it doesn 't have to be . The weird songs and variety of characters are enough . It is actually a parody on horror films from that time . When the film was released , it was quickly forgotten . Luckily the hardcore fans saved it from oblivion and it soon became a cult hit . The film is best to be seen in theatres , where audience participation takes place . It is still shown at midnight screenings now and then and I definately want to attend a screening once . Fans dress up as characters , take props that are used during particular scenes in the film . Everyone is accepted , no matter who you are . It 's all about being free and being whoever you want to be , and sexuality isn 't shunned either , no matter if it is man and woman , man and man or two ladies together . And that is what appeals most to me , not being afraid of judgements and just living the way you want to because you fucking can ! Not to mention Tim Curry is a brilliant transvestite . I prefer him this way than him scaring the living daylight out of me as It the Clown . I think it is brilliant that it has become such a cult - hit . Here 's an example of the audience participation , these are taken at the 35th anniversary screening . The first one is Dammit Janet , performed by Matthew Morrison and Lea Michelle from Glee . Just listen to the audience singing along and screaming , especially during the second one : The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not for everybody . You have to be slightly insane to get it and appreciate it . For all those years it has been a safe place for freaks and outcasts , such as me , to be themselves among people who think the same . Nobody judges you . I 've been extremely busy the past few months which almost resulted in a nervous breakdown or at least a smashed window here and there . The past 10 weeks I 've been an intern at a school , teaching kids the wonderful magic of the English language . In my first few weeks I already had a very distressing moment as the class decided to go all out against me . Luckily I managed to control them in the weeks to come . Right now I 'm in my last week of the internship , and there is a project going on so my duties for now will be to guide the students through the project . Easy peasy Lemon Squeezy as my Grammar teacher would say . It 's a tough job , teaching . That is one thing I know for sure now . For a moment I thought it would be good for me to move to Amsterdam and start doing a course in English at the Uni . Considering the current situation in the Netherlands regarding studying ( if you have 1 year of study delay for whatever reason , you have to pay a fine of 3000 euros ) , I decided to finish this course . I actually started liking teaching very much , although I 'm not sure how I will feel about it in a while . At least I will have a grade which is beneficial . Last week I had exams . The pressure of internship was added up to the pressure of learning for these necessary evils . It meant I had to skip the studytrip to Bath , Cardiff and Bristol . I just wouldn 't be able to manage . I 'm still waiting for my grades and I hope the results are good . Don 't we always hope that ? The first thing is arranging meet & greet winners for the KatyPerryForum . Katy has been very generous in providing us 5 passes for each show , and of course winners have to be chosen . It seems easy but it 's a tough job . I received daily emails from fans who were not eligible , begging me if I could give them tickets . It 's tough being put in that position of constantly having to reject people but the rewarding side of it is what makes it easier to do . I enjoy receiving emails of people who are so grateful that they 've met their idol . It gives me a lot of joy . . . . and I liked it . After 3 years at last ! She is a sweetheart and deserves all the success that is coming her way now . She is one of the most beautiful human beings I 've ever seen , and it takes a lot for me to say that . She genuinely cared about the people there and took her time with everybody . And for people who say she can 't sing live , just go to one of her shows . You 'll be blown away by the power of her voice and performance . I had the best time ever in Candyfornia ! About the autograph : Years ago , when Myspace was still cool and Katy unknown , I sent her a message asking when she 'd come to Europe . She said first the US and then she 'd conquer the rest of the world . I told her this and said : " From that moment on I knew I had to stick with this girl . " She then high fived me and was all excited because it actually happened . And from now on the only way is up ! In the past , I have proven to suck at blogging . I still do probably , but I am attempting to better my virtual life and actually share all my thoughts with you . Not that my thoughts are interesting or entertaining at all . On the contrary . This is just a way to keep that one person , who accidentally stumbles in , updated on all my exciting projects . I am a real project person . Everyone who knows me knows that . Speaking of which , I haven 't even properly introduced myself . You can call me Ingrid . Or Ingie . Just no Ing unless you really know me . Muffin is another of my splendid nicknames . Though it sounds kind of strange if you don 't know the context of it all . You might know me from http : / / fairytalesbeforedark . blogspot . com It is a fair possibility that you happened to come across that one and rolled into this . Anyway , I felt it was time for something more personal . Through this blog I will keep you updated on my antics and of course the process of my work . In case you 're interested . If not , I 'd rather see you leave . There is the door ! |
I thought it would be really easy to do this week 's de - cluttering project . The idea was to put away the winter coats ( and hope that I don 't need one again for many months ) . I also store the vacuum cleaner in that cupboard though , so the first thing I did was drag it out , of it 's hiding spot . I had not vacuumed behind the furniture since January , when we put away the Christmas tree . For some strange reason , I suddenly thought this would be a good time to do it . I started off pulling out the big chair , and the table beside it . Before Christmas this chair was on the end wall , but I moved it to be beside the window , just so there would be enough room for the tree . I thought , if I 'm going to pull he furniture around , this would be a good time to put it back . Basically that just meant interchanging it with the love seat . As I may have mentioned , back when we bought this set , it 's bigger than our previous furniture , and it has not really fit into the room as well as one would hope . Once I had the loveseat pulled away from the room , I took a notion to move the one piece of the set that had never been on the end wall to that position . The couch . I wasn 't sure it would fit though as there was a dresser and an end table in each corner . I know , you are wondering why on earth a dresser is in my living room . Well , I inherited it . It was in my Grandmother 's living room when I was a child , and then it was in my Aunt 's living room when my kids were growing up . Now it 's in mine . It 's never made it to a bedroom , at least not within my lifetime , so it just seems like it belongs there . To fit the couch into that spot meant I was going to have to move the dresser . It 's old . It 's genuine wood , and it 's heavy . It also had drawers full of a lot of heavy stuff that made it impossible to move without emptying them at least partially out . That , of course got me to sort and eliminate some things that I found in there . . . . like really old financial papers from way back in the 90 's , and some gardening and nature type magazines that I guess I thought I would paint from . But really , I prefer to paint from my own photographs , so why was I keeping them ? But in the end , after a lot of pushing and pulling and grunting and groaning , and even a few moments of wondering if I was going to have to wait for hubby to come home to put it all back if it didn 't fit ( as I was too worn out by then ) , the room ended up looking better than it ever has . I did some unscheduled de - cluttering of drawers , and maybe even the room as it actually looks like it 's bigger now . I even got all the rug and baseboards vacuumed . I think I did a good job , even if it wasn 't the one I intended to do . Oh wait . I think maybe I have that backwards . I am currently reading " Stephen King / On Writing " and he says the characters take on a life of their own and end up making the story he 's trying to tell so much better than he ever expected it to be . I don 't often write fiction , but I have . What he says is true . The characters take the story and run with it . This reminded me of my high school days , so many years ago . I remember hating the way English Literature teachers took the fun out of reading by pulling apart the novels we were assigned to read . They said things like , " What did the author want you to think when he wrote that ? " I figured , even then , that this was utter nonsense . Story tellers don 't write words to purposely make you think this thing or that . They just tell the story and let the reader fill in the blanks . Except , perhaps in the case of a mystery , when the writer might purposely think up some red herring to throw at you , just to put you off the scent of figuring out who killed who too soon . Good writers don 't plot the story out nearly as much as some of my English teachers would have you think . It just proved they are teachers , not writers . When writing fiction , characters often lead you places you would never have thought of going . This could change a plotted story completely , or if you are stubborn about it , make the story you insist on trying to tell unnatural and stilted . You have to let the characters lead . They know where they are going , even if you don 't . I had a mother say to me recently , " I wish you could teach my son to write . " I felt that was a great compliment . It started me thinking though . I 've heard a lot of people state that they can 't even write a letter . I 'm sure they can , but they were probably intimidated by all those English lessons having to do with grammar and composition they had to endure in school , and came out thinking it was all a lot harder than it actually is . Putting words on paper can be intimidating if you think about it too much . That 's the trick , I guess . Don 't think about it . I have an answer for anyone who ever told me they would like to write a letter to a friend or relative , but they just can 't write . If you can talk , you can write . I get them to tell me what it is they wanted to tell the person on the receiving end , and when they were done , I say , now pick up your pen and just write down what you just told me . It doesn 't need to be any fancier than that . Many of them don 't believe me , I 'm sure , and those letters never do get written . That 's a pity really . The best way to improve your writing is simply to read . Let go of the thought of being some literary genius and just enjoy the art of writing . You will likely succeed as other people will identify with what you are saying . It 's just talking on paper , after all . As you can see , that 's all I ever do here . I got you to read this far , didn 't I ? Posted by I 'm not sure if I can call what we have been doing this week de - cluttering , but there has been a lot of sorting and boxing up of stuff going on , and we 've certainly been moving it about . My oldest son is getting ready to move from one apartment to another . He has been living in the current place for at least 10 years , and has been happily collecting tons . . . . and I mean that literally . . . . . of records . Yes , I 'm talking vinyl . The problem with that is they are difficult to move . You can 't put too many in a box because they are so heavy . If you put them in boxes so they are standing on edge , the boxes cannot be piled one on top of another . Sometimes that 's the only way they fit in the box though . The room where most of them have been kept is on the 4th floor of a building with no elevators . That means a lot of hauling box after heavy box down an awful lot of stairs . My son doesn 't actually move until the end of the month , but we knew early on that there was no way we , or anyone really , could haul all that weight down that many stairs all in one day with collapsing before time ran out . So , we decided to get some of them down and out of there early . As it happens , he has transferred a lot of those albums onto CD 's now , so he was willing to give up a lot of the records . It would have been nice to have had time to try to sell them , but that wasn 't possible . So if you are interested in old vinyl records , take yourself over to the Brockville Good Will store , as we hauled two vanloads full over there this past weekend . It doesn 't matter what your musical taste is , I 'm sure you will find something . We also made off with a box full of video movies , some of which we will keep for the grandchildren . Just about everything is now boxed up and ready to move . I 'm glad my son was so good at that , though he had himself pretty well boxed in before we hauled away all those records . We moved him in there ourselves , but it is very apparent that we will be needing to hire someone to help move him over to his new place . Luckily for all , it 's on the ground floor ! Years ago a strange thing happened to me . I didn 't understand what was going on . It didn 't seem possible , but it certainly felt real . At the time , an elderly aunt was living in the local nursing home . She was a spinster lady , as she often called herself , and had gotten to the point where she needed care . She had phoned me numerous times a day to tell me that , until I eventually found her a spot in the home near me . Every day I would walk over there and visit with her for an hour or more . It became obvious that she was suffering from some kind of dementia , as she sometimes forgot where she was or how long she had been there . Other members of my family either stopped visiting or refused to go because they preferred to remember her as she once was . But I went , day after day . She had always been important in my life , and it bothered me terribly to watch her decline . I had no one to share that burden with . Then it happened . I was sitting alone in my living room when this feeling came over me . It was like I was enveloped in love . There is no other way to describe it . It was absolutely marvelous . I was overcome with this sensation of being totally surrounded , by nothing but love . It happened a couple of times over the period of a week or so , and then it was gone . Today I feel like someone , my father perhaps , had come back to thank me for looking after his sister . I can 't be sure it was him , but I do know I didn 't imagine the experience . If I could , I 'd imagine it as often as I could manage . It was that wonderful . There is just no way to conjure up that feeling again . It came out of nowhere , and then it was gone , as was my aunt not too long afterwards . The article I read was in the March issue of Elle magazine . Scientists actually call this type of episode the " sensed presence . " Though not necessarily the spiritual hug I received , apparently otherwise normal , healthy people do sense someone with them in times of stress . It lets them know they will be alright if they just persevere . I was certainly stressed as , not only was I dealing with this elderly relative alone , the staff at the home had told me that they could not legally stop my aunt from leaving the building if she decided to walk out the door . She had not yet been deemed incompetent , and she often asked me which way my house was . While this sensed presence , or " third man " as climbers call it , is known to come to people in isolated or dangerous situations , the author soon learned that it could happen to anyone living with stress . Even him . If you want to know more about this sort of experience , read The Third Man Factor by John Geiger . Actually , I think the excerpt available at the top of the linked page is the same piece I read in the magazine . For me , it was just validation that I did experience this special phenomenon , and it 's nice to know I 'm not alone . . . . . in any sense of the word . There is a big book sale coming up at the Merrickville United Church in May . I 've got way too many books so I thought I 'd start weeding them out . I have a terrible time parting with books though , so when my nine year old grandson came for a visit recently I gave him a job . I hauled up several armloads of children 's books that are stored in an old china cabinet in the basement , and had him sort them into four piles : books he liked ; books he thought his little brother would like ; books that were too young for either of them , but maybe their two year old twin cousins might enjoy ; and books to send to the sale . He was really good at sorting them , though sometimes I was a bit surprised at which pile he put something into . Once he got those piles established , I got some boxes and we packaged them up . The books for the sale were easy enough , as were the books for the twins . There is a general rule though , at his house , that he 's not supposed to bring things home , as he and his brother both have more books and toys than any kid actually needs . I figured we could get the books back to his place if we did it a few at a time though . He sorted through his pile again . There were some books that he had me put back in the basement because he said he really wants to read them but he 'd do it later , however , he did manage to fill a small box full to take home with him . Those were all for him to read now . I wanted him to do the same for his brother . But he had other ideas . He thought those books should all go in the spare bedroom , so they would be there when the little one came for an over night stay . I didn 't think it would go over well if one kid went home with a box full of books and the other kid didn 't get anything until his next visit , so I picked out a few to take to him . He was quite happy with the books I chose for him , especially since there was an old colouring book in the pile . It didn 't take him long to discover the colouring book also had a story line at the bottom of each page . Even though he 's still in kindergarten , While I didn 't get that cupboard empty yet , I did get rid of quite a few books , with others already designated to go to a new home sometime in the future . We 'll tackle the bottom part of the cupboard next time my grandson visits . I think there are games and puzzles down there . I might even get to use the cupboard as my basement pantry if we keep this up . Meanwhile , if you have any books you want to get rid of , the Merrickville United Church will be happy to accept them . You can deliver them to the Merrickville Library , or drop them off at the Church between 10AM and noon , or after 6 : 30PM on Wednesdays between now and the 1st of May . Maybe you will even manage to make room to take home a few you haven 't read during the sale that takes place during the three middle weekends in May . Recently , while on Facebook , one cyber friend was hinting that it was time for me to post a new blog . Just then , I spotted a picture another cyber buddy had posted , and laughingly told him that picture might just inspire a blog post . He put up a smiley face . That 's how these things are born . The photo was of a bar and grill called I Don 't Care . When I saw it , I immediately thought it was a very clever name . I 'm sure I know how it came about . When a couple who has lived together any length of time decide to go out , the man often asks the woman , " Where would you like to go ? " The reply is often , " I don 't care . " Now , guys may not find that helpful , since they generally aim to please , and they don 't see our answer as helpful . The thing is , in most families , the woman does the cooking , and the man eats what is put in front of him . He might occasionally make a suggestion , or put forth a request , but for the most part , he has no idea what he will be eating until he sits down at the table . Women like to eat out because it means they not only don 't have to decide what the meal will be , they also don 't have to cook , or clean up afterwards . We 're sure , where ever we are taken , we will find something on the menu that we will be happy to eat . It 's a treat just to get out . Since men seldom get a choice as to what they are going to be eating , we are often quite willing to let them choose not only what they want off a menu , but what establishment they want to head for . When we say , " I don 't care , " when being asked where we want to go , we are really saying , " You choose dear , since you never get a chance to decide what you are going eat the rest of the time . " ( Mind you , if the guy comes up with someplace we 'd really rather not go , you can be sure we 'll set him straight ) . I think whoever thought up the name of this establishment needs to open a chain of them , and have them pop up all over the land . Then , when a woman tells her man " I don 't care , " when he asks her where she wants to go , he will know exactly where to take her . Posted by With Spring 's arrival comes a little task I put off too long last year . I needed to plant my heritage tomato seeds . I put it off so long last year that I only ended up with a few unripened tomatoes by the time the frost came back . I did my best to save the seeds , though I have no idea if they will germinate this year at all . That 's a major shame since every one I planted last year germinated . I went down to the basement to find a container to plant these few precious seeds in . What I found was a messy jumble of pots that had been taken to the basement and abandoned there . My basement is rather cool and I tend to avoid it , so these things can happen easily enough . But we 're de - cluttering on these pages these days , so this looked like a job for this week . First I sorted plastic pots into one pile and clay pots into another pile . Then I took them out to my gardening cupboard in the garage . If you were wondering why they didn 't get put there in the first place , it was because there was too much stuff piled in front of that cabinet last fall . Not my stuff , mind you ! And if you are wondering why I don 't just throw them out , well , it 's just about time to plant things , or give some perennials away , so I may need the pots . If I am going to dispose of any , it will be after that time has past . With the pots put away , that left the planters . I cleaned out space in that cupboard in the background of the photograph to see if they would fit in there . The cupboard holds craft supplies , and matted photos left over from old art shows . I got most of the planters to fit on the top shelf , and I 'll de - clutter the bottom shelf some other day . As I said , it 's cold and damp down there , and I 've had a bad cough for several weeks now , so I don 't want to aggravate it . I did use the Shop Vac to clean up the area though . Then I used it to take care of a lot of spider webs and dead ladybugs . After that I washed down the cupboard doors . I think I did pretty good , even if I didn 't get rid of everything . The frog planter will have a plant in it soon enough . The green pot needs descaling . Our hard water has built up a lot of unsightly calcium along the bottom edge . I 'll take care of that soon as I like that pot . It 's one I painted myself . It 's sitting on a battery that my hubby promised to dispose of . So other than that , there is just the two other planters that are stacked together that don 't have a home . Oh , and the little tray of square ones that I 've tucked beneath the edge of the cupboard . It tends to sit on my kitchen table where I can grow herbs or violets in those pots . Right now my hoya has that spot as it will bloom there at this time of year . I think I did pretty good this week , especially since I got rid of so many spider webs . I also got rid of a bag of old clothes , and a big bag of magazines . I have a pretty busy week ahead of me , so I 'm not sure what kind of de - cluttering I can find time to tackle . I 'll have to think about that . What spot in your house needs a bit of de - cluttering ? Maybe your ideas will spur me on . Spring has sprung , or so I 'm told . It was difficult to believe that though , with all the snow that 's still on the ground . This is a picture that was taken from my living room window on Sunday . Does that look like spring to you ? The temperature had began to climb and the warm sun hit the white siding of my house , causing the snow to start to recede near the foundation on the south side . I saw actual life coming through the ground on March 26th . When I posted that on Facebook , a few people were amazed that I had bare earth . I explained that this was near the foundation , but it still gave some people hope that spring was not just a figment of our imagination . Today , even I got a surprise . The first crocuses decided to bloom , in a spot where I had not noticed life yet . Yes , they are snuggled right up close to the warm foundation , but now I 'm starting to believe spring really has arrived . There is hope after all . My first crocus last year , was on March 28th , by the way , and my records say they were a couple of weeks later than the year before . This year they are a week later than last year . If this is a trend , then so much for global warming . At supper time , I saw a mosquito sitting on the window screen . Not everything about spring is welcome . But since it 's still not warm enough to expose too much skin , we may be able to enjoy a few flowers before we start feeding the bugs . Happy Springtime , everyone ! |
After high school , I went to school in Florence ( across the Tennessee river ) to Florence State College , now named the University of North Alabama . I played the clarinet in the band one year . I stayed in the dorm the 1st semester and home the next semester . After a year at FSC or UNA , I transferred to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa , AL . I majored in music , with the piano being my principle instrument and the organ as my secondary instrument . I spent a lot of my time alone in the practice rooms . I went to the Wesley Foundation ( campus wing of the Methodist church ) and most of my friends came from there . I usually had a dorm room with one other girl , but my senior year I had a private room with a shared bathroom . I got plenty of exercise because I didn 't keep an A - B average , I couldn 't park near my classes ! But having a car was definitely a plus . My degree required I play two recitals . One in my Junior year and one in my senior year . The junior recital was 30 minutes of memorized music with another student on the program . The senior recital was an hour of memorized music all by yourself . It was very difficult but I somehow made it through . I was used to playing in a band , not alone and I didn 't care for solo performances . I didn 't do too well on the organ . It was a big instrument and the bench was too high for me and I had to sit on the edge of the bench which gave me the feeling of always about to fall off . I don 't have pleasant memories of learning to play the organ . But I played the organ many years at church and I think I did a good job and I enjoyed it . I graduated in the summer of 1966 and I was so glad to get out into the real world ! We lived three blocks from the elementary and high schools . Therefore , I got to walk to school each way . The Junior High school building was on the same block as the elementary school and was built in 1918 . That helped me remember when Alabama came into the Union in 1819 ! All I remember in the 1st grade was my teacher 's name , which was Miss Grace Jones , and she had three reading groups , the red , blue and yellow birds . I don 't remember which group I was in . In the 2nd grade , it was the math I remember . I had trouble with math . I remember on the big test they gave to see how everyone was doing , I couldn 't divide two number into three and I would just make up a number and put it on . The teacher in the 3rd grade had traveled a lot and we saw lots of pictures of her travels . I don 't remember 4th & 5th grades but I have good memories of the 6th grade . I can even remember the teacher 's name , which was Mrs Johnson . We had a club , the Correct Talking Club . All through the week , when we heard someone use incorrect English , we would write their name down and put it in a box and on Fridays we would have a meeting of the CTC and would pull the names out of the box and would give the person time to correct their mistake and if they couldn 't , we all would help them . It was a fun time ! The Jr . High building was right next to the Elementary School . It had wooden floors and the bathrooms smelled bad but I used them anyway . The lunchroom served fish every Friday for the Catholic students . I was in the beginning band and played the clarinet . I was also in the choir 7th and 8th grades . When we got out of the 8th grade , we went to Sheffield High School . Since I lived 3 blocks from the high school too , I walked to school . I played in the band all 4 years . I didn 't like marching band and the football games but preferred concert band . I don 't remember the names of the teachers but I remember their classes . I had good English teachers . Our graduating class was the largest so far with 160 students in 1961 . I was in the senior play and enjoyed draPosted by I found this in my Mother 's things and think it 's pretty good . Lord , Thou knowest I am growing older . Keep me from becoming talkative and possessed with the idea that I must express myself on every subject . Release me from the craving to straighten out everyone 's affairs . Keep me from the recital of endless detail . Give me wings to get to the point . Seal my lips when I am inclined to tell of my aches and pains . They are increasing with the years and my love to speak of them grows sweeter as time goes by . Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong . Make me thoughtful but not nosey ; helpful but not bossy . With my vast store of wisdom and experience it does seem a pity not to use it all . But thou knowest , Lord , that I want a few friends at the end . I 'm afraid I resemble this thought ! Frank moved the bird carriers into my bedroom last night after the birds had gone to bed so they wouldn 't see them . Some how Gertie knew something was up for I went to get him out and he climber to the highest point in his cage . I went after him and he gnashed on my finger once and then climbed on board . I didn 't have any trouble getting him in the carrier . Rikki didn 't want to get in but she is such a laid back bird and I didn 't have any trouble with her . I hate driving the old Accord for it 's ride is not as smooth as the new one , but I had to drive it to take the birds to Hartselle . It ran fine but it has a lot of vibrations at 60 - 70 mph . I 'm supposed to a bring Rosko and Gert back in two weeks but I 'll be in the hospital by then . Rosko has some bumps on his nose and Gert has an infection that I 'm giving him medicine daily . Frank worked hard all day yesterday fooling with the car battery and now he has fevers . I 've given him Tylenol and hope he won 't have a bad night . I haven 't been sleeping well at night so I go back to bed and sleep another 1 - 1 / 2 hours in the morning . After I got up today , I had to go to Walmart to get a new battery for the old Accord . They gave me the wrong one but Frank put it in and the car started . In the meanwhile , Karen and I drove over to Decatur to look for this clothing store . We went into Belk 's and Penny 's and Dillard 's plus the store we originally went to find . Dillard 's does have formal wear we learned . After wandering around the Mall we came home . I then had to go back to Walmart to get the right battery . There was no problem with it all , it just took a lot of time . The new battery cost $ 81 . 00 . Tomorrow , I have to take the birds to Hartselle to have their wings , and nails , and beaks trimmed . As tired as I am now , I believe I will sleep in again ! I had to go to the bank and deposit the check we got back for returning the 4 air cleaners and I went to Walmart to buy a few groceries . I forgot to locate the Popsicles so we only have 4 left . I could always get some more tomorrow . I asked Frank where my old Accord keys were for I thought he had had them last . After a while , he came in and said that the keys had been left in the car and that the battery was dead ! I told him to stay away from my keys in the future ! That 's what I 'll do tomorrow , get a new battery for the old Accord . Karen and I are to go out tomorrow so I guess we 'll pick up a battery and then go to Madison to the Pottery place . Maybe they 'll have some garden stuff on sale . Got a cancer support group meeting tonight . Mary Lou Hill is coming over and will ride with me . There are storms predicted for tonight and tomorrow and that may stop some ladies from coming . Heck , life goes on whether it 's raining or not . I 'll take my umbrella . I didn 't get up early enough to make it to exercise but I did go to H ' ville to take back the 4 air cleaners to Oreck . No problem there . Then I went to Sam 's and bought a lot of food and supplies . It all fit into the trunk of the car with the toilet paper in the back seat ! I got most of it organized and dated . We 're running out of room downstairs ! I need to get rid of the organ and the exercise bicycle . My car needs washing and I am too lazy to do it . With the old Accord , I had it washed every week but unfortunately , I used the old style car wash that marred the finish . Not this time though . I take the birds to Hartselle for a trim Thursday . I 'm rather counting down the days I have left with my old knee . I haven 't talked to Trudy lately . I 'll need to coordinate things with her soon . I got a small nap in today before the Home Teachers came . Church was good . Susan Harris talked about keeping journals . I 'm glad I blog for journaling . My writing has really gotten to be abominable and no one could read my journals . I 'm beginning to think seriously about my upcoming operation . I have to register at the hospital ( it 's too early to do that ) , I 've gotten some of my clothes packed . I 'll have to call the nursing home rehab that I want to go to and see if I can get a room . It may be too early for that but I can give them the time that I will be coming and maybe see if they might have a room . My eye is still bloodshot . The medicine the Dr . gave me hurt more that it seemed to help so I stopped using it after two weeks . I 'm using some homeopathic pink eye drops now and hope they will help . Plus I got a blessing for it to heal and for my operation in August . I 've already used " end of the week " several times so I just used " end " . The weeks are flying by . Saturday night again . Didn 't do much today . Washed several loads of clothes and have one in now . I have the bug light on in the kitchen so I won 't forget I have a load of wash in to take out . I have several sheets to fold but I may not do it tonight . I bought two purses at Walmart last week . The one I had had to be zipped and then a snap snapped and it was a bit sloppy so I got a small purse the same pattern as the old one . It 'll hold my phone , wallet and one other thing . It 's just right for a small purse . I also got a bigger red purse for when I want to carry everything with me . Mary Kate gave me a straw bag from the Philippines and it was hard to get my things out of , even though it is right smart looking . I like purses and get tired of carrying the same one all the time . Just put the last load in the dryer . While I was waiting for the spin cycle to finish , I played the piano . I was playing pieces I had learned in high school . I did pretty good for not practicing . I think I will practice the pieces and then play then for my grandchildren . My Dad never found a house in Tuscumbia for us to live in , so we settled in the next town called Sheffield . It was after the 2nd world war and housing was scarce . It was a two bedroom house and my brother and I shared a room until he got too old and wanted to have a room of his own . We would listen to radio shows at night after we went to bed until our Dad would come to tell us to turn off the radio . We listened to the Shadow and a mystery show I can 't remember the name of and on Saturday mornings there was a show about teddy bears and picnics . That was the name of the song they sang . I remember when the extra room was being added on , I would walk on the floor joists and one time I fell through to the ground . I was so embarrassed and was glad no one saw me . I remember we had a stove that stood on 4 legs . One night I heard a noise in the kitchen and got up to investigate . There was a big rat under the stove . I went and got my Dad 's old work shoes on and stepped on the rats tail and then hollowed for help . My Dad came out and took care of the rat . There was another time that I was walking by the bathroom and heard a coughing sound . The light was out and when I turned it on , I was staring down at the face of a rat in the toilet ! He must have crawled up from the sewer . Mother called a neighbor over to dispatch the rat . As my brother got older and went off to college , Mom and Dad gave me their master bedroom at the front of the house . I remember the day when I got my bedroom furniture ( I still have it in my house today ) . It consisted of a bed with two bed side tables the the tops were the same height as the headboard . When they were in place , it really made the bed look good . Sometimes I would put the two end tables together and make a dresser out of them . The set didn 't come with a dresser and must have cost less . I lived in that house , 1202 Atlanta Ave . , Sheffield , AL , all my life . My parents lived in it until they died . It was a good house . The first thing I can remember is getting dressed up to get my picture taken with my brother . We were living with my grandmother is Jasper , AL . My Dad 's job with TVA ( Tennessee Valley Authority ) was over and he couldn 't find a house in Tuscumbia so my Mother , brother and I were living in Jasper with Mamoo ( That 's what we called our grandmother , Joanna Gertrude Jackson Palmer ) . Our grandfather had already passed away by then . I think my brother went to the first grade there . I must have been 2 1 / 2 or 3 years old when this picture was taken . I had on this little white dress with ruffled sleeves on it . my brother had a brown shirt on . I remember this picture because the man who was taking the picture told me not to put my feet on the light cloth we were sitting on . This group of pictures were in a bamboo frame with 5 oval cut outs for the pictures and it hung in my mother 's home . I have them now , somewhere . Since we both had Dr appointments Wednesday , Karen and I didn 't take a trip anywhere so we said we would go today . Karen has the wedding of her son Brent to go to during the Thanksgiving holidays out in Utah , so she wanted to go to H ' ville to do some shopping so she could get some ideas on what sort of dress she 'll need . The wedding is going to cost the brides family about $ 10 , 000 so the reception is going to be formal - floor length dresses and just suites for the men . I like LDS weddings for they are inexpensive but I guess one can spend as much money as one wants . We looked at Ross , Belk 's and Penny 's . Karen got some ideas and took pictures of pieces of clothing she liked . We got home in time for me to get the garbage out ! While we were in H ' ville , I had Karen to take me to Airport Rd . to the Oreck store to get some new charcoal filters . At first the young man said he couldn 't just give us new filters that it would cost them too much . I told him we had spent a lot of money buying the filters and the smell was so bad , we couldn 't use them . He made a phone call and another young man came in and he smelled the filters and found that two of them smelled " funny " , so he gave me four new filters still in the packaging . It 's best to keep the customers happy . These new filters smell and we are going to put them outside in the sunlight to see if the sun won 't get rid of the smells . It 's always something ! I forgot to take my medicine but didn 't know it ' till lunch time . I went to exercise class and came home afterwards - no , I forgot . I went by the P . O . to mail Kathy Best some cards and then I stopped by the pharmacy and then on to Dr . Moore 's office for one last visit before August 11 , my other knee operation time . Then , I stopped by Dollar General and got a gallon of milk and then I came home . Dad had found some air cleaners on sale in H ' ville and he wanted to go get them TODAY ! I rested a while before we set out . Orick had moved and were 10 miles down on Airport Rd . We bought 4 units and when we got them home and opened them up they stank ! Dad carried them downstairs and put them in the bathroom to air out ! Looks we 're on the merry - go - round again . I found that my soft suitcase with wheels would be ideal to pack in for the nursing home . I 'll have room for a blanket and pillow too . It 's good to know what clothes to take this time . Trudy was a lifesaver last visit and I 'll be wearing the clothes she got for me then . Trudy asked me , at my age , 66 , did I get what I was expecting . I don 't know what to expect from the future , but I 'm happy with myself and after the operation I hope to be happier ! No , Mary Kate , or I don 't know how Dad picked the company that fixed our windshield . The one that did it said you couldn 't see the repair and the other company said up front that you would see the repair . The insurance co . paid for the repair . They had rather pay a small amount for the ding than to pay for en entire new windshield . I got this neat T - shirt from the American Cancer Society that is light pink and has brown letters that say , " Fight like a Girl " on it . I like it . The man from Safelite Auto Glass came this morning and fixed a ding in our windshield . The " original " ding we saw was a ding that had been already been fixed but he found another and fixed it . The repair is warrantied for the life of the car . The outside of the car is dirty and I need to wash it . . . . Naugh ! It 's 10 : 15 AM and I 'm hungry . I guess it 's time to eat some macaroni salad ! It goes down easy and satisfies the greedy worm . That was good , um - mm . Trudy and Sadie got back from Kentucky at 3 PM yesterday . I hope Forrest enjoys himself . I bet he does . Don 't have much to say . I 'll check back in later . Frankie was written some songs for children in conjunction with this lady who is writing a curriculum about manners . He sent me three of the songs and they are cute and carry the message of manners well . I hope all goes well and the lady gets her work published . Mary Kate passed her test in weight lifting . Actually it 's about whole body training . If she doesn 't get anymore children in her preschool , she will shut it down and will work at the gym and will have more time for the family . I had to take Dad to the SAS store to get his insoles . He didn 't like the way they felt but he 's going to wear them anyway . Trudy has gone to Kentucky and back today to take Forrest and some other youth to a youth conference . There will be classes on the Gospel and dances and free time and there was a nice sit down meal at one conference I attended . It 's a lot of fun for the youth to make new friends and be with old friends . She 'll be tired for the rest of the week . I made a big bowl of macaroni salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and mayo and red wine vinegar . It 's pretty good but one has to eat a lot to fill up . Frank had an appointment with Dr . Morgan at 1 : 30 PM and it was after 3 : 00PM when we left there . His prostrate cancer hasn 't come back . I believe the Dr got it all . He 'll be tested every 6 months now instead of every three . It was a good Sunday . It was a bit of an off day at Primary . Sis Decker forgot words , I missed notes on the piano and the Primary President said she wasn 't good at what she did ! All in all , the day went well . Mary Kate called while she was on her way home from a weight training for the gym . It 's a total muscle exercise done to music . A class for young people or people of any age who has all of their parts working . Talked to Frankie last night and he and his family are doing well . Trudy drives to Kentucky tomorrow to take Forrest to EFY . Dad goes to H ' ville tomorrow to get his insoles for his shoes . The Pioneer Day celebration was held at the Elkmont park . There were swings and slides and a ball field for the kids and plenty of shade for the old folks . Everyone brought a dish - I brought pickles - and the Ward furnished the meat . Before we ate , someone read a pioneer story and them the Primary children sang to pioneer songs and a rock band composed of two teens played and we had another talk . Then it was time to eat . I drove to Elkmont and back . I must have been tired for I come home and took a nap . Got up and fixed a macaroni salad . I put too much mayonnaise in it but it was light mayo . I chopped up some tomatoes and had a few baby cukes I put in and I think it 'll be eatable . I 'm going to have to fine some suitcase to pack my clothes in for the trip to the nursing home . I have something , but I think it is too big . I have a really old suitcase that I don 't want to use , but it 's not too many times that I need a suitcase for anything , so why worry about it now . I 'll check on the one that I think is too big . I 'll do it now . Ha ! I 'm reusing all of my titles . Bought groceries at Walmart . Spent the money mostly for cereals and milk ( powdered ) . I did get a few other things . I have a new keyboard to get used to . It 's nicer than the old one I was using . The touch is faster but I guess I 'll get used to it . I do like it . Not much has happened today . I notices a ding in the windshield and Frank is calling around to see if we can get it fixed . These glass people come to your house to fix the windshield . One company that he called said , " You know you can see it ? " ( the repair ) , so he called another company and they said you couldn 't see it and we choose them to repair the windshield . It 'll get done nextTuesday . After my back to back trips , I rested today . Tomorrow , I 'll go shopping after exercise class tomorrow . Talked to Mary Kate today . She only has two pre - school students and she can 't make money with only two , plus the mothers want more children for their children to socialize with . She said the gym wants her to take a class in weight training so she could teach that if she closes her school . Today , I picked up Karen Decker and we drove to the Coon Dog Cemetery in Colbert Co . Most of the roads were good and straight but when we turned off of Hy 72 the road narrowed and began to be very hilly . We drove about , oh , I don 't know exactly how far it was , and we thought we had missed it , when there it was , Coon Dog Cemetery . It was full of headstones with the names of the dogs and the owners and it was set in a grove of trees . One grave had a cement log going up like a tree trunk and a dog looking like he was treeing a coon . It had a chain link fence and razor wire a top the fence ! The owner didn 't want anyone messing with that grave . I took lots of pictures for Dad to see . We stopped at Ruby Tuesday 's and had the same lunch as Trudy and Sadie and I had the day we went to Troy . Eating a Tall Cake two days in a row has surely gotten me spoiled ! We drove over 100 miles today and when I got home I lay down for a spell and Frank got me up about 5 : 45 PM . I wasn 't hungry for supper but ate a bowl of cereal later on . After the cemetery , I drove through Tuscumbia , Sheffield and Florence and then we came home . I was 38 miles from the Florida state line today but I hadn 't brought my swim suit so I had to turn around and go back home . Ha - ha - ha ! Actually , it was " we " and we show nuf almost made it to Florida without knowing it ! I went with Trudy and Sadie to Troy , AL , down below Montgomery , to make a police report about Trudy 's purse being stolen . We got a late start , didn 't leave until 11 : 00 AM , but made it to Troy in about 41 / 2 hours . We spent some time in the campus police station filling out a report and then we went to Ruby Tuesday 's to eat . When we left there we took a left turn instead of a right and there in lies the tale of our Florida trip . After about 45 minutes of driving , Trudy decides she doesn 't recognize the territory so we stop at a rest station and ask directions . It seems we had been traveling south instead of traveling north ! We were 38 miles from the Florida state line ! I don 't know how much time we lost but we got turned around and headed for home . I had parked by car at Calhoun Community College . Trudy and Sadie dropped me off about 11 : 30 PM and I got home at 12 : 00 AM . It was a wonderful trip and I wouldn 't have changed a thing ! It 's not every day one gets to travel the length of the state with people you love . We talked the entire trip and still had things to say when we parted . Yes , this was the day we ALMOST made it to Florida ! While Sadie was here , I forgot to take my PM medicines twice . I 've had trouble sleeping for two nights now and when I did my medicines for the week , I discovered that I had missed the two PM 's . I bet that 's why I haven 't been sleeping well . I went to exercise class this morning . Jan Laytham is feeling a bit better , but still doesn 't know exactly what has been bothering her . Someone had some cucumbers from their garden and I got three . I spent most of the rest of the day in bed trying to make up for the loss of sleep . I believe I will sleep better tonight after I take my Pm medicines . Tomorrow , I 's go with Trudy to Troy , AL to make a police report about her stolen purse . It should be an interesting trip . Four hours down and four hours back . Had a really good spiritual Sabbath day . I have an eye infection and the ointment I have to put in my eye coats it with the ointment and I can 't see out of that eye clearly . It was interesting playing the piano with one eye ! I did okay but it is odd having both eyes open but not being able to see out of one . Our pioneer day will be next week in the Elkmont park near the high school . It was to be at the park near the Athens high school but the Mud Volley ball game is going to be there too and there would just be too many people in one place . The Primary children have been asked to sing Pioneer songs . I hope they have a keyboard or I 'll just sing along too . Trudy just called and said she needed to go back to Troy , AL and make a police report about her stolen purse . I volunteered to go with her . It 's a 4 hour trip down there and a four hour drive back . She said Sadie might go too . We 'll go this Tuesday . Then Karen and I will go to the Shoals area and visit the Coon Dog Cemetery . I 'll need to contact Mary Lou and get a time when we can go Visiting Teaching . I was tired this morning and slept in and then after breakfast I took another little nap . Sadie was watching TV and I didn 't mean to sleep so much . The week is catching up with me . Sadie cleaned the downstairs and even vacuumed down there . Now Dad 's got her vacuuming upstairs ! Sadie 's a trooper . Trudy called and said they all had a great time at Youth Conference but that her purse got stolen . She had left it in the car and someone broke into the trunk and got it . She had me look up the phone number of the Teacher 's Credit Union to cancel her card but her Social Security card and the cards of the kids were in the purse . I hope they don 't have any identity theft with the loss of the cards . They were on the south side of Birmingham and said she would call me when they got to Cullman . Then Sadie and I could get in the car and drive to Calhoun Community College and meet them there . Sadie will be glad to see her family . She 's had a good time here , but it 's always good to be back home with your own family . Frank has an appointment with Dr . Moody to get his eyes checked and because of an cancellation , I can see the Dr . about my eye infection . My own attempts to clear it have failed and the eye is getting redder so I 'm glad to see the Dr . Youth Conference should be over Saturday some time and I 'll take Sadie home . She didn 't bring any Sunday clothes so she couldn 't go to church , so going home Saturday will work out good . I know she will be glad to be home with her family . I haven 't entertained her well . Maybe after the Dr . s visit , we can go some where . Something is wrong with our air conditioner again . It 's 80 plus degrees in the house now . It 's in the 90 's outside . Dad is calling David Boston , Amy 's husband to come over to check it out . Hope it 's fixed soon ! I got up late this morning , 8 : 30 AM . Ruth was coming to pick blueberries and I cooked dinner . She had her two grandboys with her . They were cute and very nice and they helped pick berries . Today is the first time I 've been out to the blueberry bushes . I don 't cook with them and eat only a little of them so I 'm glad Ruth wants them . After lunch , Sadie and I went to Walmart grocery shopping . Dad got involved in helping Sadie wash her clothes but he found out what I already knew , that the perfume that is in some washing detergent , can 't be washed out . He gets so upset about smells . Ruth brought some fresh tomatoes and cukes and green beans and a few okra pods and some bread and butter pickles and some jam . I cooked the beans for lunch and they were very good . Supper was comprised of brats on hot dog buns and a piece of cake Sadie made today . It called for a stick of butter instead of oil and that really make a difference in the taste . The frosting was vanilla . I had two pieces today and hope to stay out of it until it is gone ! All the weight I 've gained back is due to sweets . . . Mumm . m . m . m , how I love sweets ! Trudy and kids met us at the SAS shoe store and we picked up Sadie . She will be spending the nest 3 - 4 days with us while Trudy , George and Forrest are at Youth Conference . After we got home and had some lunch , Sadie and I went back to Huntsville to shop . Then when we got back to Athens , we stopped at Walmart to get Sadie some clothes to wear so she wouldn 't smell of perfume . She found two pair of pants and two shirts . Frank 's system is so sensitive to any smell that he really has problems with odors . The new car has a smell that we can 't seem to get out and the car salesman said maybe riding with the windows open would help air it out quicker . Said the smell came from some adhesive that was used in the car . I 'm used to it now but it clings to my clothing and I have to change into other clothes after I 've been driving in it . I have an eye infection and the homeopathic drops aren 't helping with it . Frank gave me some antibiotic eye drops for it and I hope it will clear it up . I hate when some thing is wrong with me , whether it 's my eyes or my knees . August the 17th is coming up pretty soon and I 'll be able to get rid of my other bad knee . Hopefully , I 'll recover as well as I did the first time . I left early for my dentist appointment for I wanted to stop by the Mall to get some shoes . I wasn 't sure about how long it would take me to find the shoes , but it all worked out . I found the shoes the second pair I tried on . They are Reebok , white with blue trim . They are 71 / 2 instead of the 8 I usually get . I got to the dentist at the right time . Dr . Knight ground my back teeth of the denture down and it gave me more room in my mouth so maybe I won 't be clenching my teeth so much . I don 't want my ear to hurt any more . For the past two days , my right eye has been tearing up and the tears ran down my cheek . I finally realized I had some kind of infection or irritation that the homeopathic eye drops would help . I started using them as soon as I got home and my eye is doing better . I have to take Dad to the shoe Dr . or foot Dr . tomorrow to see about getting him some orthotics and some new shoes . I think Trudy wants to meet her so we can pick up Sadie . Youth Conference is Thursday through Saturday and Sadie will be staying with us during that time . Both Trudy and George will be going . Forrest wishes they wouldn 't be there so he could have more privacy ! Sometimes your parents are your best friends and sometimes you wish to grow up on your own . My nice keyboard broke and now I have this old one . It 's like driving an A - Model Ford instead of a new 2006 model . It will do until I can get a new one . Went to exercise class . Jan Laytham was there but she was dizzy headed . She said she had had a bunch of tests but the Dr didn 't know what it was . After class I went by the pharmacy and got an Rx for Frank and then went to The Shoe Dept . to return a pair of New Balance and get a pair of Reebok . I tried on several pair but they didn 't have much of a selection so I got my money back . I 'm going to H ' ville tomorrow to the dentist and I 'll stop by The Shoe Dept there and see if they have more of a selection . I took a small nap and now I feel a bit yucky . We hadn 't had rain in several weeks and I noticed a layer of dust on the car . When Forrest and I were out , I thought about going to the car wash but thought we could wash the car at home . That never materialized so t I thought I would be going to church with a dusty car . Yesterday being the 4th , the neighbors set off fire works from 8 - 9 : 00 PM . About 12 : 00 AM , thunder woke me up . I turned off the radio so I could listen to all the commotion . It really rained hard for a long time . This morning , the bird bath was full and that 's a sign that it 's rained a lot . All the dust had been washed off the car and I didn 't have to help at all ! I 'll get to go back to exercise class tomorrow . I missed all of last week and the last of the last week because family was here . I think I will take my New Balance shoes back to The Shoe Dept . and get some Rebock . I didn 't know they only kept one shoe in the boxes to keep people from walking out of the store without paying for them . I 'll have to kill some time for the store doesn 't open until 10 : 00 and exercise is over at 9 : 15 AM . I took Forrest home about 6 : 00 PM last night . At first we thought that no one was home . Forrest went to the back of the house and got in and opened the front door . We thought no one was home but Trudy was asleep in her bedroom . She got up and we talked for a while and then I went home . The new Accord is so nice to drive and I wasn 't nervous driving in the dark . Today is the 4th of July . We are just resting from having Forrest with us . I cleaned off part of my dresser so I could put a 5 drawer plastic container on my dresser for the overflow of my jewelry . I looked at my old stuff and saw that I could give away a lot of my stash . Since Forrest had worked so hard yesterday I thought he deserved a day of leisure , so we went shopping again . I thought I wanted something this time , but one can 't shop with a teenager along ! We ate lunch at the Mall food court . I didn 't get anything but a drink because there was just too much food and I knew I wouldn 't eat it all . Came home and Forrest helped Grampie exchange the hose on the kitchen sink . Forrest found out on Face book that Girl 's Camp was over so he wanted to go home and I said I would take him . When I asked Grampie he said yes , but then he realized that Forrest needed to vacuum the floors . He 's such a sweet boy and he vacuumed the floors ! He was paid handsomely for all the work he did yesterday . He painted the shed - I painted one side - and washed the side of the house where all the mucky muck grows and scrubbed the porch . I know he wants to go home . He 's been with us four nights and tonight he can sleep in his own bed ! It 's 9 : 30 AM and Forrest is still downstairs . I got up at 8 : 00 but I could have stayed in bed longer . All the walking is good for my bones but the meat on the bones gets tired . We plan to clean out the shed today and caulk around the edges . If it doesn 't rain , we will paint the shed . There are still some downed limbs that need to be brought to the burn pile . The grass needs mowing but I don 't know when it will get done . I have a problem clenching my teeth . I don ; t know if it 's nerves or what but it 's making my ear and jaw hurt . I 've got an appointment at the dentist for next week to see about it . I 'm a graduate of the University of Alabama , class of ' 66 . I majored in music , piano and organ . I taught private piano lessons in Tuscaloosa for a year and then got a teaching job in Key West , FL . There I met my husband , Frank and four months later we were married . Have lived in Athens , AL since 1976 . My children grew up in Athens . My husband is bedridden now so I add the title of care taker to the title of homemaker . I never wanted to work outside the home . I enjoyed gardening until I got breast cancer in 2002 . I 'm not able to do much garden work now , and I miss it . I enjoy going to the Wellness Ctr . to exercise . I enjoy making greeting cards and usually make a card or two each day . I love getting together with my daughters , Trudy and Mary Kate and my grandchildren . My son , Frank , lives in Knoxville , TN , so I don 't see him often . He has 4 children . I enjoy being a grandmother . please keep it in order to retain your counter functionality Insurance quotes are the way to start looking for insurance . simply by putting attention to website offerring allstate insurance the purchace process can be optimized . The poor man died with a big collection of poor insurance quotes . free counter |
First and foremost , it 's because , without it , I would have no place in the family of God . That adoption shows the reality of the hidden cost we often forget in the happiness of adoption and the creation of families : that adoption is , at its heart , redemption , and redemption does not come without a price , and sometimes , a terrible one . Without the terrible price of Jesus 's life , my position as a fully adopted and invested daughter of God would not exist . It reminds me that Hubby and I are not the only ones who paid a price for the lives of our family . God paid the ultimate one to have us belong to Him . Adoption is the reason why we have enjoyed sharing our lives with a parade of fabulous felines , some of whom we 've had to say goodbye to entirely too soon . We traded a life without cat hair and hairballs and feline kleptomania for one where cat hair is a condiment , all the best seats are taken , alarm " clocks " with no snooze buttons who want to play at 4 a . m . , and under - the - bed sneak attacks . I miss those we 've lost - Popoki , our gentle giantess ; Keiki , who liked to talk to herself and could sound like a herd of elephants when she ran across pine floors ; Pa ' ani , with his Edsel purr , who never met a stranger , just a new friend ; and sweet Minou , whose gentle heart graced us all with her presence . I am supremely grateful for those who still share our hearts and lives : Mika , who , at 17 , still thrives and is still my watch - cat and nursemaid ; Koa , who has spent most of the last 15 and a half years trying to take over the world , and is also our resident klepto ; Kimo , who helped us heal after our sudden loss of Pa ' ani ; and Makaha , who has both grown into the lofty name we gave him and still lives up to his kittenhood nickname of " Crackhead " ( bestowed upon him by Special Edition ) , who gave me purpose and a reason to keep moving after we lost Dad so suddenly last year . Adoption is the reason we have a house , not an apartment . It 's the reason I hear pinging from a video game right now . It 's the reason for an overabundance of Halloween candy in my home . It 's the reason I have all of my children . I remember , about a month into our parenthood experiment , when my parents came out to babysit for an evening to give Hubby and me a much - needed night off . When we returned home to my poor , exhausted parents , Hubby looked at my mom and asked , " Mom , tell me the truth . How long do you think we 're going to have the girls ? " As it turned out , as it has on many occasions , Mom was right . After a little over a year , we found ourselves in the position of needing to do the unthinkable : defend the girls from those who should be protecting them but were instead placing them in direct danger . We filed suit for full custody of the girls , along with a special relief petition to keep them in our care until our custody suit was resolved . Our judge was relatively new , just having been elected the prior November and ascending to the bench in January of that year . But as a former county prosecutor , she knew her stuff . What we didn 't know yet was how she would rule and when she would rule on our case , because our attorney didn 't have enough experience with her yet . My parents were present in the courtroom ; they both believed they needed to stand up for their grandchildren who could not fight for themselves , even when it meant stepping into a legal fray that now pitted two of their children against each other . My mother even testified on our behalf . She watched my testimony on the stand after the lunch break , and said afterward that she thought the judge was writing her opinion and the order as I testified . ( My father called my time on the stand " magnificent " and he said he was sorry for doubting me . ) And we were all astonished when the judge ruled that day . Her order gave us primary physical custody of the girls , along with shared legal custody ( which meant we had an obligation to share things like school grades when asked , to discuss major healthcare decisions , things like that ) , and imposed strict regulations on visitation for both biological parents . It was the best possible decision that we could have hoped for that day . It gave legal standing to what we had been doing now for more than two years . We had spent all this time acting in loco parentis , which is what gave us the legal standing to bring our case to court in the first place . Now we had the official rank of legal guardianship , formal custodianship , of these children we thought of as ours , who we were raising with all the love as if they were indeed ours . That 's only the first part of our journey , and a bare summation at that . As National Adoption Month continues , I hope to be able to share more of the ups and downs of our adoption story . Every adoption story is unique , and ours is no different . What comes at the " end " of each story - although it is so hard to call an adoption hearing the end , for it 's a new beginning - is the ultimate goal of adoption and redemption . Last week , it didn 't take me long to realize that the sinus infection I 'd felt brewing for a good ten days had been given a kick in the pants by Oldest 's nasty case of bronchitis the week before . I have been volunteering at the church office since the secretary retired , and so I went in on Monday to take care of my responsibilities , picked up Hubby from work later that afternoon , and announced I was going to bed . I slept for the better part of the next 12 hours . Tuesday morning , I woke to find that my already - low voice had dropped an octave and a half . Hubby had to work , the twins had counseling appointments , so did I , and so adulting was going to be necessary for several hours . I don 't think I 'd said more than two sentences to Hubby before he determined I needed to see a doctor , and soon . Yeah , he was probably right . So I squeezed in a run to the urgent care nearby between the twins ' counseling sessions and mine . Sinus infection and antibiotics and a trip to the pharmacy . Yes , I sound terrible . I feel terrible . It 's a matched set . I told my counselor she got the warmed - up voice that had moved a few steps back up the scale . On Wednesday , I had never been so glad that I did not have anywhere to go . I got up long enough to get the kids off to school ; that was it . As I sat half - comatose in the kitchen , waiting for the twins to head out to the bus stop momentarily so that I could go back to bed , Middle said , " Oh ! I need to get my duck ! " I explained how my closest friend moved in the middle of fourth grade . We lost touch , and I 've not been able to track her back down . My next best friend from elementary school , KC , moved the summer after eighth grade . ( " I 've heard of this KC , " Middle said in the middle of the story . ) She and I still are in touch , and she got married the week after Hubby and I did , and she now lives in the Philippines . " No , you 're not ! I 'm your mother . I may not always get your name right , but I know how old you are ! " Maybe two minutes went by , and I felt a small hand on my shoulder . " Mama , are you okay ? You 've been laughing so long , I 'm two years older . I 'm 11 now ! " " Mama , " she said as she started to scoop the litter box , " you know something ? When I first came in , I was gonna try to convince you that I was 11 . How do you always know my mind ? " Said to the coal - black , mouthy , sneezy , crabby , completely graceless , and slightly - less - ancient - than - Mika , 15 - year - old Koa , who had no intention of leaving him alone when she wanted attention . Who cares if he has to go to work to keep her in the lifestyle to which she 's accustomed ? She had affection needs which she required to have met , and required that they be met right meow . If we acknowledge the realities of life , it 's a post that has been coming for 15 years . I don 't like to think of life as nothing but a rush towards death , especially as death has overshadowed so much of my life for the past 14 months . But we are born , and we die , and occasionally , we witness both ends of the spectrum for those we love . . . And , truly , I hadn 't been . We were full up at home . We had four adult cats , Popoki , Keiki , Mika , and the most recent , Niele . It was just the two of us ( and them ) . We didn 't need any more . " We 're not naming them . We 'll get too attached . We 'll call them by number for birth order . One , Two , Three . " Inoa was calm and unafraid of us and trusting , so we figured she had either been left behind when someone moved away ( there 's a special level of hell for those fiends ) , or she 'd gotten out after moving with her family and tried to come back " home . " And found trouble . Or , more likely , it found her . We didn 't know how many kittens to expect , but we didn 't figure a recent stray - she looked too well - cared - for to be anything but that , especially being a long - haired cat - could have gotten too pregnant . And we 'd never been feline midwives before . What did we know ? We just knew we 'd promised our nieces and nephews we 'd call when the kittens arrived . Lo and behold , we had a book , so we read up on the subject , and then we made a box and set it up in the second bedroom of our postage - stamp apartment . The book said a cat 's gestation period is about nine weeks , and they start to look pregnant at about six weeks . Hubby called his sister - in - law . " Hey , how long has she looked pregnant ? " I stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room , and looked down . Huh . That 's odd . Inoa had her lower half , including her rather immense belly , wedged into the bottom of our two - " story " kitty condo . " Inoa , are you stuck ? " I crouched down next to her . She was visibly panting , much like Po did when we traveled . Po hated the car , and pretty much panted from start to end of any trip and double - timed her shedding . " Here , let me help you get out of there . That 's got to be uncomfortable . " I reached under her to gently try to ease her out - the opening began a good inch and a half off the floor , and that 'll give anyone a crick in the back , even a cat . Maybe especially a pregnant cat . I quickly apologized to Inoa , but she ignored me ( she was just a little busy ) , and I raced back to the other room . " Perfectly acceptable box , but noooo , she wants to have a belly full of babies in the kitty condo , which doesn 't have enough room for her . " I grabbed a pair of rubber gloves , the box we 'd set up , took it back to the living room , put the condo in it , then gently placed both mama and the new baby ( using gloved hands ) in the box . His supervisor happened to be a cat person . She offered to led him come home right away . He said he was sure Inoa was fine and I was fine ; he could stay at work . ( She let him stay until he had an hour left in his day , and then insisted he come home to the babies . ) When Hubby arrived home a couple hours later , I told him , " I know for sure there 's three . But I think we might have four . I think one arrived , and I just can 't tell , because it 's so dark in there . And she 's laboring again . " Hubby bent down and scratched behind Inoa 's ears , talking softly to her . He was able to get a better look inside the kitty condo , and sure enough , we had four kittens now . The fourth was a little all - black spitfire . Inoa seemed to be struggling with delivering the next kitten , so Hubby gently moved the four others out into a laundry basket with some clean dish towels and coached her through the birth . ( Yes , Hubby can list feline midwifery among his skills . ) This kitten was big , and another little brown tabby girl . No wonder Inoa was tired . When another hour and a half had passed and no more kittens had arrived , we assumed we were done having kittens . ( Don 't you like how we say that ? " We " ? ) Hubby put in the promised call to his brother 's house and asked to speak to the nieces and nephews . While he 's talking to them , I went over to the kitten box . Hubby had taken out the kitty condo , and put the top on the box ( we had sacrificed a colored - cardboard storage box for this little adventure , figuring it was tall enough the kittens wouldn 't get out until they were old enough ) . I lifted the lid to check on the babies and Inoa , and did a double - take . I counted again . " Honey , we 've got another one ! " The next eight weeks were a delight as the kittens became bouncy little troublemakers and did all the cute kitten things . Kittens 1 and 6 were named Amber and Zeta , and moved in with very dear friends of ours , Snarky Dad and his wife , who took our advice to get two kittens , so they 'd kill each other and leave their much - older cat , Niban , alone . Kitten # 2 , the lone boy in the lot , Max , went to live with my friend Airman , who was also expecting a baby in a few months . Pregnancy was rough on her , and she Minou was unthreatening , even to squirrels . was looking forward to having a baby to cuddle ahead of schedule . # 5 got the illustrious name Ceayte , and found a home with a dear college friend of ours , who moved in with us for awhile in a whole other story . And kittens 3 and 4 . . . well , I had always wanted a black kitty , and Hubby had said we could keep one of the kittens if it was black and a boy . Sneaky # 4 was in no way a boy , but certainly made it her life 's mission to stay with us . You 've met her . Her name is Koa . Kitten # 3 departed our home for a short while , to live with a co - worker of Hubby 's and his French wife . They gave her the name Minouchette , which translates as sweetiepie . When the wife 's allergies proved to be too much , the little long - haired black and white fluffy bundle came home . . . and never left again . We considered renaming her , giving her something Hawaiian to go with everyone else 's names . But we couldn 't . Minouchette was the perfect name . It suited her well . We kept it . We kept her . A soft meow claims my attention . If I don 't make room on the loveseat , Minou will . I moved aside some papers so she has a place to settle next to me . Settling is not what she wants . My attention is what she wants , and in these last few weeks she 's been very aggressive about getting it . She wants to be near me , she wants to be on me , she wants to " help " me work . In the last year and a half or so , since we had to say goodbye to Pa ' ani so suddenly , we 've watched as Minou has no longer hidden upstairs in the bedroom so much . It 's been nice . The Apparition , as Dad often called her , now regularly haunts the house , and perhaps , we mused , Pa ' ani 's happy - go - lucky , weaselly little self had had far more of an impact on the feline hierarchy of the house than we thought , because here Minou was . Not hiding . Still surprisingly nimble , Minou alights on the cushion next to me . Our eyes meet . I can only see her right clearly , the left pressed deeply back into the socket by chronic swelling of an old cyst site that has flared again , and done what the vet has warned us it would eventually do , turned into a cancer we cannot see . I reach up and stroke her now - dainty head . It 's funny to say that , but the weight loss is so extreme that it 's even affected the shape of her head . " I know , " I whisper . There have been times I 've sworn I 've seen her eyes wonder and toss questions at me : I see that you see , Mama . I know that you know . I 'm sick . I 'm dying . . . . Why am I still here ? Over the last two days , I have whispered my goodbyes at night , before going to bed . " It 's okay , sweetheart . You don 't have to stay . You can let go . If I wake up in the morning and you 've gone home , that 's okay . You don 't have to stay for us . It 's okay . " We 'd told the kids on Monday when Special Edition and Mr . Nurse made a special trip out to say their goodbyes . Special Edition had been astonished when she touched Minou at just how much weight had simply vanished . Youngest , in particular , didn 't want Minou to die ; Minou was her baby . She 'd developed a very strong attachment to her in the last year or so . But it was time . Oh , it was time . In fact , it was probably long past time . Minou was ready . I gently rub her still - soft ears . " I was there when you were born . I will be there when you leave this life here . " I whisper the promise gently , having already made the call . " I will not let you go alone . " It 's been a terribly rough morning . Hubby opened , so I was up very early to take him to work . The first thing I did when I came downstairs was to see how Minou was . The twins had early counseling appointments , and then I had to find something to make to take with me to the August potluck for my monthly writers group . Is it selfish of me to go , after what will happen this afternoon ? Is it bad that I 'm leaving Hubby to deal with the kids , and going to be with my friends , knowing I just need to get out of the house after all this ? I had enough time after errands and appointments to get home in time to make the cupcakes and pull them out to cool , and then I fetched the carrier from the upstairs hallway . I pulled out the filthy towel that was inside it ; apparently this carrier had sat out after the last vet visit ( probably Makaha 's ) with the gate open , and someone had hacked up a hairball . This would not do . I grabbed a clean one and rubbed it all over my arms and neck . Minou should at least smell me , and not some laundry detergent or fabric softener . Not on her last trip . I tried to rein in my temper . " Because of Minou , " I managed to say . I set the carrier on the island and bent to pick up Minou , who was at the water bowls , unable to stop my tears . She meowed as I cried into her fur . She 's so light ! I think she 's lost even more weight ! Everything within me rebelled at the though of putting her in that carrier . I did not want to do it , even though I knew this was the right thing . I knew this was what she wanted . I knew this was what she needed , to not suffer anymore , to not be so sick anymore , to not lose what decency of life and dignity she had left . Her eyes had been giving me permission to act for weeks . They spoke that this was what she wanted , release from the disease that had corrupted this body . Youngest wanted to hold her on the way down . That was impractical . I put the carrier on the front seat , removed the ring on my right hand so she wouldn 't cut up her face on it , and let her stroke herself against my fingers on the drive down . We picked up Hubby at work , and he drove us over to the vet while I held her in the carrier on my lap . In the conversation during the short drive between Hubby 's store and the vet 's , we talked about what was going to happen , how the kids could come back if they wanted , but didn 't have to , and could see as much as they wanted , but leave if they felt uncomfortable . As we pulled into the parking lot , Middle asked , " Are vets murderers ? " There was a devastating pause as Hubby and I just stared at each other . " Because I think they are . " " Minou doesn 't talk , so she can 't tell us what 's wrong . But we know she 's sick . She 's lost a lot of weight . Her body is starting to shut down . " This was definitely true . I was glad Hubby was the one answering her , though . He went on , " We see these things that are happening to her , how much weight she 's lost . She 's lost most of her teeth . And her fur doesn 't look as nice anymore , because she can 't take care of it . It hurts her to move to do that . She 's very old , and very sick . And as good pet owners , we know that sometimes we need to act when our pets reach this point . " You know , there really is nothing worse than sitting in the vet 's waiting room , with a bunch of you wearing teary - eyed , shell - shocked expressions , with a carrier . . . and a small cardboard box next to it . Everyone knows why you 're there , and everyone hates to be you . You 're like some sort of vile disease , as you sit there and wait to be called back , twenty - five minutes past your appointment time . The tech finally called us and we went back to the exam room . He pulled up Minou 's chart ; her weight two and a half years before was 15 . 25 pounds . I gently pulled her out of the carrier and we got her on the scale . Five pounds , 15 ounces . I answered the tech 's questions about why we were there , and he said the vet would be in to talk to us . Oldest did not want to be in the room with us , but nor did she want to be in the waiting room alone , so she settled for the furthest corner of the exam room by Daddy . Dr . M came in as I held Minou - who was not fighting being held , a pretty unusual thing for her - and did a brief exam as I explained again the sudden weight loss , the loss of bodily control , the signs of pain we 'd started to see quite suddenly , the eye pressure that she had to be experiencing with her left eye . Middle and Youngest crowded close , wanting the comfort of touching their beloved friend . I asked them to step back at the same time Dr . M very kindly did , too , as she moved on to palpating Minou 's belly and other things most cats offer up strenuous objections about . Dr . M was wonderful ; we have seen her before , and she explained everything she was going to do before she left to gather supplies . She looked between Hubby and me and confirmed that we were in agreement about euthanasia today . We both nodded . Dr . M left the room and came back with a soft fleece , a legal form for us to sign stating we had asked for this procedure , and the sleepy drug she had said she would use first , that would basically send Minou into a very drowsy , sleepy state , where she would feel no more pain . Dr . M laid the fleece on the table , and gently positioned Minou on it , so she wasn 't laying on cold , hard , stainless steel , and injected the first drug along Minou 's back . I don 't know that Minou even felt it , tiny pinch that it was . It was so effective , so fast , that I was terribly afraid we were actually going to lose Minou before the barbiturates were administered . That seems so silly to write . . . but I suppose I was afraid she was going to suffocate under the effects of the first drug and it would cause her pain , and that 's what we were trying to avoid , giving her more pain , more suffering . But Minou merely drowsed . Middle and Youngest joined me by the exam table as we told Minou how much we loved her , how much we would miss her , that she should go find Poppa when she got to heaven , and we cried . But we loved on her as much as we could in those last few moments . When Dr . M came in with the barbiturate , Oldest asked if she could go back out to the waiting room . We let her go . We knew she would process her grief in her own time . Youngest turned tear - filled eyes to Hubby . " Daddy , I don 't think I can watch . " He opened his arms and she ran into them , burying her face against his chest . Dr . M gently shaved off some of Minou 's surprisingly still - thick fur on her back leg , located a vein , and pushed the final dose . Middle stood by me , her hands on Minou 's shoulders the whole time . I felt the last gentle puff of air exhale with Minou 's final breath , and cried in relief that she was at peace . " I promised , " I whispered nearly inaudibly into her fur . Dr . M pulled her stethoscope from her neck , popped in the earpieces , and pressed the bell against Minou 's chest . " No heartbeat , " she gently confirmed . " Stay as long as you need to , okay ? " Hubby came over with Youngest and the four of us stood there and cried . When we were ready , Dr . M helped us carefully move Minou 's body into the small cardboard box we 'd brought with us . We would , we explained , take her home and bury her there with her brother and sisters . As we helped funnel dirt back over the body of our dear friend , whose life we have had the privilege of caring for , from before her birth until today , her last day , Oldest wandered over with some flowers . She 'd wanted to write on the flagstone we used as a marker , too . " I miss her , " she said . My faith tells me that God loves His creation - all of His creation . He believes all of it is good . And if God cares enough to know that two sparrows are sold for a farthing , if He cares enough to daily dress the lilies of the field , if He promises to redeem His entire creation as His word says , then I know Minou now races in His presence . And there was the low - level larcenous behavior , too , of breaking into our neighbor 's ( unlocked ) home , saying hello to Garden Lady 's kitties , and perusing her freezer to find a box of 100 - calorie ice cream sandwiches - and eating the five left in the box , leaving only the empty box behind . ( When Garden Lady 's mom told Hubby of the " break - in , " and the startling theft of only ice cream sandwiches , it became obvious the perpetrator was under 5 ' tall . ) Needless to say , Youngest will have to replace Garden Lady 's ice cream sandwiches with her own money . Mom has been out to visit on several occasions this summer . Never for very long , due to our cats and her allergies , but Mom has come out for a couple of days here and there . The morning after Middle 's surgery , Mom handed me a ball of soft material . " I found this in the bathroom trashcan upstairs . I have no idea what it is , but it wasn 't there last night when I was last up there . " I took the wad of cloth from her , recognizing it immediately ( I 'm so sorry , SunshineLady ) . Swimsuit material . To be more specific , the flowy fabric part from the tankini top of a bathing suit set my college friend SunshineLady had bought - three matching suits for my darling girls , several summers back . They still fit the twins , barely . The tops were these little bralettes with this fabric that flowed down and around that hooked together in the back , so that , with the bottoms , it made pretty much a full - coverage suit . I liked them . And I knew that , with this fabric cut off , the top was basically . . . a bra . One very , very similar to Oldest 's new purchases , in fact . And the one sibling who was most jealous of new girly things was . . . Youngest . " It 's swimsuit material . " I looked from the ball in my hands to Mom . " It 's from a tankini top . " She still looked confused . " It 's the bottom part of a tankini top . And I 'm pretty sure why it was done . " When Hubby got home that night , we both sat down with Youngest , who did confess that she was the one who cut off the material . " Why did you do that ? " Hubby asked her . " Yeah , we kinda thought so . " He smiled at her . " It 's okay to want big girl things . But Mom and I know when you 'll need them . And when you do , we 'll get them for you . So let 's not cut up any more swimsuits , okay ? " Youngest was also very brave on July 12 . As anyone near a Chick - fil - A knows , July 12 is Cow Appreciation Day , and it was the first that Hubby 's store was experiencing , since it 's only been open since late January . Show up in any kind of Holstein gear , and you get a free entree . Youngest was determined to get a picture with the Chick - fil - A Cow , who also made an appearance that day . And for still being sometimes a little shy around people - and cows - she doesn 't know , she did really well , and got a picture with the Cow before we left . It was the happiest riot I 've ever seen in any fast - food joint . I even saw a guy come in with a Cow Tails caramel cream pinned to the bottom back of his shirt . ( Genius . ) Even the crew got in on the fun , many of them decked out in cow - themed gear . Special Edition is a little surprised that " we are an Olympics family . I didn 't know that . " Well , we are not nearly as devoted as , say , Jen Hatmaker , whose nightly posts have been a source of absolute hilarity for me . ( I nearly herniated myself , laughing over her observations on Ryan Lochte 's hair color . Mostly because they mimicked mine . Intervene , Jesus . ) She 's had quite the summer . We had her checkup with her pediatric ophthalmologist in mid - June , regarding her exotropia . For those of you not in the know , this is an eye problem that looks kind of like it might be a lazy eye , but it 's not . Short version : her eye muscles don 't want to work well together , and they are not strong enough or tight enough to force her eyes to focus together like they 're supposed to . Her glasses have been compensating for this , but even so , when she 's tired , her left eye especially drifts way out of alignment . Both eyes are exotropic , but the left is the most obvious , particularly when she 's tired . Despite our efforts , the doctor checked her eyes and determined that Middle was now at the point that she needed surgical correction . The first available date was the week Middle was going to be at swim camp , and since Middle wouldn 't be able to put her head under water for two weeks following surgery , we definitely didn 't want to cut swim camp short , so surgery was scheduled for July 7 . Middle was both petrified and excited . She finally got to have surgery and get presents like her sisters had gotten for their surgeries ! I proceeded to quote her , verbatim , from a conversation we 'd had no more than two weeks before , " ' Mommy , I have to tell you something . Dodo birds aren 't my favorite animal anymore . They 're my second favorite . I just can 't stand it anymore . I need more ducks ! ' " Medium had , you see , decided about six or eight months ago that ducks were no longer her favorite animal . Dodo birds were , despite their distinct extinctness . While she never fully explained it , I suspected that some pesky third - grade stinker found out about her love for ducks , made fun of her , and so she found something much " cooler " to love , even if it meant shoving ducks to second place and not being able to get any Dodo bird figures for Christmas . She was , however , terrified to hurt Gramma 's feelings by telling her she no longer loved ducks . So , when she 'd made this pronouncement a couple weeks before , it came as no surprise to me , but the method of delivery was a scream . Hubby had dissolved into giggles then , too . A couple of days before the surgery , after a mother - daughter disagreement about chores ( she wanted to be done ; I said she needed to do two more things before she could be done with the den cleaning ) , I heard something suspicious : the sound of a full garbage bag thumping down the stairs . In retrospect , I should have recognized what was going on as her nerves about the approaching surgery . Oops . I only realized it when I saw the date on the picture I pulled to use here . Innyhoo . . . I discovered that Middle had bagged up all of her ducks because someday she was " going to have to pass them down to my children , so I 'm going to have to get used to not having them , so I might as well start now . " We had a conversation about how she 's only nine and a half , and she doesn 't have to worry about that for a very long time . I showed her a big box in the attic that holds a bunch of my stuffed friends , which I still have , despite my rather advanced number of years compared to hers . I asked if she wanted to see what was in there . She said no . But within fifteen minutes , she 'd changed her mind , and wanted to see what I had in there ( which , by the way , was a box much bigger than she thought , as it was a vacuum box , and still doesn 't contain the entirety of the Auntie J Stuffed Friends Alliance ) . So I helped her get into the attic and we brought the box down to the living room . And we squealed over my Friends . Surgery on July 7th was very successful , and the surgeon - her ophthalmologist - was very pleased with how well the procedure went . On its surface , it 's a simple surgery , putting a dissolvable suture into the controlling muscle to tighten it and thus force the eyes to align . Poor Middle woke up in recovery essentially blind , because her eyes were covered with a massive ice pack , and she couldn 't see us . She could only hear us , and the anesthesia does wonky things to the brain . Hearing her say , " Daddy , is that really you ? " was heartbreaking . She felt better once she could feel us touch her . The PACU staff were wonderful . Having never experienced anesthesia before , nor narcotics , we didn 't know how she was going to react to certain medications . We were so grateful that the anesthesiologist was willing to come back several times to check on our daughter , who didn 't seem to be responding to the pain medicine right away . He said that sometimes he sees kids not respond right away to the Middle with our PACU nurse medication he used , and then it kicks in with a bang - and that 's exactly what happened with Middle . It seemed to take forever to kick in , but when it did , it was very obvious it had . We were able to travel home with popsicles and some cool new sunglasses for Middle 's now very sensitive eyes , and between the prescribed pain medicine ( which we used at night ) and staggered over - the - counter stuff , we were able to keep her mostly comfortable as she recovered . The following week was my birthday . I did not celebrate last year , despite the decadal mark I hit , because it was so soon after losing Dad , and those kinds of birthdays were always such a big deal in his family . I wasn 't sure I really wanted to celebrate this year , but knew I needed to , even if just for my kids . Mom came out again ( she had been out the week before for Middle 's surgery ) , and we all drove out to a gorgeous lake about an hour and half away from us . Hubby had been to Ollie 's recently , and had found a Civil War book he wanted , so he 'd allowed the kids to spend $ 5 on themselves , and the twins had found a set of walkie - talkies they really wanted . Since we took two cars , we used their walkie - talkies to communicate , and it was an hour and a half of , " Do you read me ? " " I read you . But do you read me ? " After several hours of fun in the sun at the lake , including meeting up with my cousins who live within 40 minutes of the lake and were able to come out and join us at the spur of the moment , we headed for home , and stopped at a local Hoss 's Steakhouse for my birthday dinner . At one point , before our dinners arrived , I looked next to me to see Middle yanking her straw out of her drink in order to sluck down the soda remaining in the straw . Since I 'd just asked her not to do that a few minutes before , she looked impishly guilty when I caught her . " Or , " Middle mused , " a hoolibarian . A hooligan and a barbarian . " She smiled proudly at me . " I made that word up myself . A combination of hooligan and barbarian . " " I know . " I couldn 't contain the chuckle . Mom was still laughing . This girl . . . God , does Dad see this stuff from up there ? He 'd love this one . This morning , I was half awake while Middle was talking to me about her library book , about drawing reptiles and lizards , and the conversation had started out about why her book didn 't have any pictures of pterodactyls in it , just the pteranodon and quetzalcoatlus flying dinosaurs . I tried to pay attention , I really did , but I was exhausted and zoned out at some point along the way . I know she mentioned something about several of her classmates saying things ( all of them boys ) , but the next thing I clearly heard was , " And then the kitties will have crunchy poop . Yeah , really crunchy poop . " Innyhoo , the first follow - up checkup for Middle 's eye surgery showed that one of the muscles had been a tad over - tightened . Dr . S was a bit surprised ( " It 's been awhile since I 've done that ; guess I have to keep myself humble , " she observed ) . However , the extent of the exotropia in that eye was so severe that she suspected Middle was still relying on old muscle memory to help it keep crossing the way it was , so she wanted to give it a month and see how Middle was then . When we went back a week and a half ago , the eye was greatly improved , and Middle just needs new glasses to help finalize the proper muscle adjustment . Shortly before Christmas , I came across a new musical addiction that I 've fallen completely in love with , and I desperately wish I could have shared this group with my dad . I think he would have loved them , too . But in the lack of sharing there 's something of a blessing . . . I can listen to Home Free Vocal Band without the angst of grief over shared love . Oldest : I don 't want to marry Tim , though . Mommy , it 's the other one . The one who sings like this . On this song . [ mimics again ] . Me : It 's a gemstone , yes . But it 's also a name . However , I don 't think that you get a say in their baby 's name . I 'm just gonna warn you now : get cozy . There 's two more similar posts coming , and they 're going to be longer than this one . Life here has not been dull . Lest you think that we don 't love Special Edition or Oldest very much because I 'm lumping them into one update together , well , that 's not true . They just haven 't wreaked as much havoc this summer . This is partly due to the fact that Special Edition now lives with her fiance about two hours away from us , and that Oldest has mostly , well , kept her nose clean and only not forgotten to take her ADHD meds a couple of days , which has resulted in some insanity for me . The last two Sundays , we have met up with her and Mr . Nurse , her fiance , at a lake that 's relatively near us , and had a marvelous time . It was great fun to be able to just hang out and enjoy each other 's company . Oldest 's birthday is next week , so we 're trying to arrange another lake party for that . Speaking of Oldest , she is also doing well . She 's nervous about the fact that she starts middle school in the fall , but otherwise is a spunky kid . Thanks to a camp scholarship , she spent a week at summer camp in mid - June and came back less tanned this year than she has in years past . She didn 't pick swimming as one of her activities this year . Otherwise , she would have come back nearly as chocolate - colored as a Hershey 's Special Dark bar . I need SPF Bulletproof . She barely needs sunscreen to protect from sunburns ( we still have her use it for obvious reasons ) . She doesn 't burn . She just gets darker . Me , I can burn on a cloudy day . Oldest also made a big step into the world of growing up this summer , too . ( She was so excited about this that I don 't feel bad about sharing it . ) She now has training bras , and is very excited . She even made me text Gramma about it right away . Lessons in bra - wearing etiquette have been ongoing . Last week , while the twins were at swim camp , I had Oldest with me when I went to go pick up Hubby from work . Oldest had , that particular day , forgotten to take her focus pill in the morning and I hadn 't discovered it ( because she told me she was " absolutely sure " she had ) until about 3 in the afternoon , and one of the things that happens with ADHD is that , well , in Oldest 's case , she can 't stop talking . And I 'd had enough . She 'd been running her mouth nonstop for eight hours . And the whole drive down to Hubby 's store . And while we waited for him to finish . " Because she didn 't take her pill this morning like she said she did , and she hasn 't shut up all day , and I just told her to be quiet a few minutes ago . She 's driving . me . NUTS ! " Hubby just laughed at me . He has ADHD too . He knows how next - to - impossible it is for her to actually stop talking when she doesn 't have the help of the medication to slow her brain down so that it works more efficiently . So do I , but I had no more nerves left . Then Oldest wanted to know why it was that she didn 't have any bras yet , because " almost every " girl in her school wears them . I explained that she didn 't need them yet . Of course , this led to wanting to know when she would , and Hubby and I both explained that it 's different for each girl . She peeked down her pajama top to look at her chest , and sighed . Then she announced that it bothered her that her one nipple was flat , and the other wasn 't . Hubby looked like he 'd swallowed a live eel . He awkwardly patted her arm . " It 's okay , honey . They 'll . . . um . . . get better . " Our street lost power this morning at about eight minutes to five . Yes , I know the exact time . Apparently I was in a point in my sleep cycle that the sudden stop of my bedside fan jolted me immediately awake . It has been rainy and threatening rain here for the last several weeks , the temps have still been doing a marvelous yo - yo impression ( albeit without previous extremes ) , and I have been miserable as my crankle ( as my friend Marti ( previously mentioned here as Anne ; Marti is more fun , she thinks ) and I have taken to calling my cranky ankle ) has protested the bipolar weather . Today was no exception , and after ferrying Oldest to school at 7a this morning for an all - day field trip , then Hubby to work because I would need to pick up Oldest before he was off work for the day , then picking Oldest up ( which took a ridiculous amount of time because the rest of the world was picking up their fifth - graders too ) , then picking up Hubby , and then finally driving home , my foot cried foul . I grabbed my heating pad and parked myself on the loveseat in the living room . As the kids were getting ready for bed , my phone beeped a couple of incoming texts . The pharmacy , I noted , saying my prescriptions had been refilled . Hooray . . . but there was no way I could go get them . The lesser of two evils was definitely tucking the kids in . . . and resetting their alarm clocks . I dispatched Hubby to Rite Aid and hobbled up the stairs . I reset the twins ' clock first , making sure the alarm had maintained the proper time ( it had ) . Then I kissed everyone goodnight ( Middle , Youngest , and Kimo , who had joined Middle in bed ) , and gimped down the hall to Oldest 's room . Using the light from my phone , I reset her clock . . . and noticed the paper box she 'd appropriated from somewhere that was filled with barbie dolls and ponies . " This isn 't for dollies . " I paused as I looked at it again , then back at Oldest . " Do you know what this is for ? " I got downstairs and texted a picture of my find to both Marti and Hubby . Since I was chatting with Marti Waffle * on Facebook anyway , it was easy to relate the whole story . Hubby sent me a voice message in reply , dread dripping from each syllable : " Is that what I think it is ? " * Postscript : Marti now wishes to be called Waffle , because she told me she liked the idea of having " an alter eggo , " and I asked if she was now a waffle . So there we go . Anne = Marti = Waffle . I hope I can remember this . Hubby : Okay , well , they aren 't bad words , but they 're grown - up words . " Sexy " is when you think someone is really good looking , when you look at them and you think " Hubba hubba ! " I think Mom is sexy . You 'd have to ask her if she thinks I 'm sexy . Hubby ( laughing ) : I 'm not disputing it . There are some things I know more about than Mom , but not much . So I 'm not disputing . Hubby : Because it 's too heavy for you , right ? Just like you can 't pick up the couch because it 's too heavy for you , these words are too heavy for you , too . When you 're older , we 'll talk more about them . Okay ? Hubby : Well , the reason he was sad is because he was rich , and he had lots of stuff , and he didn 't want to give it away . That 's why he walked away sad . He didn 't want to give it all up . Here Hubby , former youth pastor , with four years of religion education , stopped and looked at me . " So I 'm really enjoying this . I 'm having a deep , meaningful , spiritual conversation with my kids . I 'm loving it . And that 's when . . . " Dad loved the BBC 's " Top Gear , " so we made him this shirt one yearfor his birthday . The girls ' shirts all say " STIGLET . " He loved it . Danny Cumberland learns he 's got a daughter in the same afternoon that he learns she 's also dead . What 's a dad to do but try to bring his daughter home ? And she is his daughter . . . right ? So I picked up the Fries from school today . We walked back across the street . Hubby drove past us on his way to PeeJay 's house ( on t . . . Let me be really clear up front ( since I am , after all , writing unmasked ) : I LOVE my kids . I LOVE being a stay - at - home mom . I really , . . . |
At this point , Diana and I are now in the social room , alone . She is strapped down to her chair for her safety and mine . Donnie is outside the room with the guard . Diana : I know a lot about you . I know that Drage isnt your last name . I know about Kay . I know about your little girlfriend . I know what you are trying to do . I know . . . . . . . Diana : Well , first off , let me say this : you do NOT know what you are getting into here . You have already seen firsthand what happens when he is confronted . What makes you think that you can survive ? What makes you any different from , say , Robert , or Zeke ? What if you 're destined to end up like Zero and Fizz ? Me : It doesn 't matter what happens to me . My job is to try and protect others for as long as I can . Whether I end up like Zeke or Zero , it matters not . Diana : Ok , fine . What can I tell you about Him that you don 't already know ? You read all those other blogs of the people who are fighting and running and saving others . You know who he goes after , you know what he looks like , you know about his army . Me : In other words , you are still of no help to me . Diana : Think about it . Why were lakes always important in the so - called " legends " and " folklore " of the past ? Me : They were often seen as seats of power for the mythological creatures . Guarded by fairies and other legendary beings and creatures . Diana : The lakes were GUARDED . Did you ever think that maybe Mr . Suit was hiding something over at the lake ? Me : Hiding something ? You mean there is something hidden in the lake that 's important to Slenderman , or is it in the woods next to the lake ? Diana : Yes . That little boy , the current missing child . He will be found by the lake in one week . There is no need for him . He is too weak for our cause . Diana : Of course not . Oh ! And tell your cop friend that the only thing you got out of me was that the kidnapper is the same person , that the lake is the only real clue , and that if you two are not careful , you shall be in a lot of trouble . Diana : The cop ? Maybe . You ? No . As you have been told , there are big plans for you . Now leave . It is almost lunch time . I leave the room , saying that we are finished . The guard goes in to get Diana , while Donnie and I leave . I explain to him what Diana told me , embellishing the details a little bit to satisfy his needs as a cop , but to protect him from knowing too much . Once again , it seems to come to the lake . I obviously cannot go into the lake itself . So right now , the only logical decision is to go into the woods next to the lake . I 've navigated them enough times , I will know how to get around and find my way back out . But when will I do this ? Maybe I 'll return this weekend , when Diana says that the boy will be found by the lake . It also seems that whoever Diana 's " Master " is , he knows a lot about me . He knows that I changed my last name , about my girlfriend . I won 't be surprised if he knows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . well , that 's for another night . So , it was indeed a long 3 days . Yesterday and today mostly because of work , 10 1 / 2 hour and 7 hour shifts respectively . Friday , however , was the noteworthy day . Donnie took me out to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital around 10am on Friday . It is about an hour drive from our town . When we got there , Donnie told me just to follow his lead and not say anything unless i was asked something simple like " How are you today ? " We went into what was almost like a small social room . We were told to stay there while they went to " retrieve the patient . " It was about 15 minutes before they brought her in . Now , when I say they brought her in , it was almost like out of a movie . Three security guards escorted her into the room , and after they brought her in , they actually handcuffed her to her seat . They wanted to make sure she didn 't attempt to attack Donnie or myself . The three guards left , but one stayed just outside the door , in case he was needed to take Diana out . Diana , born on June 5 , 1975 . " Kidnapped " on January 27 , 1981 . Recovered on May 24 , 1981 , at the lake that I have referred to . Been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since she was 12 . The following is the conversation between Donnie and Diana . I wrote it all down because I knew they would not allow video cameras in the hospital , and it would make things more suspicious for me , a " rookie cop , " to be filming everything . Donnie : Diana , I thank you for choosing to meet with me . This is Officer Drage , a junior cop here for some on the job training . I hope you don 't mind . Donnie : You know what I mean . The man in these drawings . The man with multiple arms . The messages . He Found Me . He Sees Me . I Am His . Those are nearly identical to yours . Diana : No , of course not . I may be clinically insane , but I 'm not crazy , you know . Donnie : Then what is your request ? Diana : I wish to speak to Officer Drage there . Just him . I want you to leave the room and allow the two of us to speak , alone . We step out of the room at that point , and Donnie asks me if I 'm willing to speak to her alone . I tell him , with nearly no hesitation , that I will do it . Afterall , if we can get information from her this way , we might as well do it . My only concern , however , is this : why does she want to speak to me , alone ? Got a phone call last night from Donnie . He was heading out to a bar in my town and he asked me if I wanted to join him , his treat . Afterall , he makes over 4x the amount of money I make in a year . I don 't really go out much , and I don 't even really drink anymore , but I decided to take him up on his offer . Afterall , who can resist free drinks ? So , I met up with him at the new bar in my town , Whiskey Pete 's . Small place , changed ownership a few times in the past 3 , 4 years . Always been a bar , though . We got there at around 9pm . We didnt actually leave until about 1am . Thankfully , it 's only about 6 blocks away from my house , so I didn 't have to drive . I had about 4 beers and 2 shots . Donnie had 6 beers and 4 shots . I was a bit tipsy , but Donnie was pretty gone . We talked about a lot of things during the night : his father , my father , growing up in town , where our lives wanted to go , etc . . . Then we started talking about the missing persons 's cases . He constantly mentioned about how the kids his father saved and the kids he 's found seemed to be connected , but he couldn 't figure out how , considering the cases were more than 20 years apart . But then he started talking about something else . Mind you , this was kinda drunken talk , so I 'm typing it up as sober - sounding as possible . Donnie : 25 years , and her mentality has never changed . She 's gone to several different hospitals , but none have been able to help her . They have her at Greystone now . Poor girl . Always drawing , writing , talking about the suited master . Donnie : Just like the kids from my father 's day , and the cases I have handled , Diana continues to draw pictures of a tall man with no face and several arms . She writes with the drawings , things like " He 's still coming " or " My Master Calls For Me . " And she talks about her master , the man in the suit , the tall one , so many different names for him . Donnie : The truth is , another kid went missing this past weekend . I went to his parents house , and they showed me drawings , they looked exactly like the ones from the kids my dad rescued . I wanted to question Diana because maybe she 'd know if they are connected . Donnie : They have to be . I mean , despite the time between them , everything about them is extraordinarly similar . But how can one person do the exact same thing over the course of 30 years , not change location , not get caught ? I just don 't get it . Donnie : That is a good possibility . You know , if you want , I can take you with me to see her . I would like to question her more about everything . Donnie : Of course I can . I am the chief of police in town . We 'll just say you 're coming along as part of your " training " to become a cop . They 'll believe me . I called Donnie about a half hour ago , and he confirmed with me that he remembered our conversation last night and that he can take me with him to speak to Diana . We are going early tomorrow morning , since we both work at night . Hopefully , I can get some more answers here . Basically , I got to my car and found another note , but this time , it was inside my car instead of on the windshield . It kinda creeped me out a little bit , considering I have the only key to my car , and I keep it on my person all the time . All of a sudden , I was attacked , by a proxy . It wasn 't the same one as last time , because it was a different mask and different build for the guy . Man , he tackles hard , whoever he was . He took me to the ground fast and I 'm just lucky I didn 't completely drop and break my camera . I managed to get up , where he kept punching me in the stomach , I kept getting him in the arm . Finally , I managed to uppercut him and knock him down . I asked him what he and He wanted , and he replied by simply saying " Stop , before it 's too late . " He then pushed me off of him and ran off . So , Slenderman wants me to go to the lake , but the proxy was telling me to stop , as if to not go there . I want to head over to that lake , but it 's too cold out . Plus , there are lots of trees over there next to it , and knowing my luck , I 'll probably find Him , as well as who knows what . But I 'm not stopping my investigation . This attack makes me even more interested in finding out what I can . Maybe I 'll head there this week anyway , just to get a layout . Man , I haven 't been there in years . I used to go fishing at that lake with my dad and uncle all the time . On days when I got bored fishing ( which was a lot , hehe ) , I would walk around in the woods there . I would have " sword fights " with the trees , I would climb the ones I could , etc . . . Such a fun childhood , and who knew that in an area I used to play in , so much bad happened . I just got home from my lunch with Donnie . It was a very informative meeting with him , and I didn 't have to share any extra information with him . Keeping him safe . That 's what I want . Donnie : It seems that way . However , all of these cases happened over the course of 30 years . It is almost impossible for the same person to have kidnapped all of these children . Most kidnappers and killers tend to move on to different places after a few successes . This one remained . Donnie : That 's right . They also described the kidnapper the same way , which is how we knew it was the work of one person . They all said he was very tall , long arms , in a black suit , and that he had no face . My father asked if they meant they didn 't remember his face , and they all said no , that there was just NO face . Donnie : I don 't think so . These kids , traumatized or no , seemed very honest in everything they said . And it still continues . Then comes the drawings they had . Donnie : Yeah , drawings . These kids , over several weeks from being recovered , showed us many drawings they had made . The drawings all had the same messages and pictures . The messages all said either " He 's Watching Me , " " He Wants Me Back , " or " Coming For You . " The pictures were either the same tall man who kidnapped them , but he often had multiple arms , the most being eight . There was also , what we believed , was his calling card . It was a giant circle with an X through it . Donnie : Well , the bodies were found at the lake in Guttenberg . Their cops found them first , called us for backup , thinking that it was who we were looking for . When our team got there , the bodies were nearly unrecognizable , until we were able to use DNA testing over the past several years . They were completely cut up , dismembered , separated into garbage bags . The organs were removed and placed in separate bags too . They were strung up on tree branches , and when they were touched , blood leaked out from them . It was such a disturbing sight for anybody to witness . Donnie : Yeah . A few years ago . On the last missing person 's case I worked on , we found another body at the lake again . As we were investigating the scene for any clues , I looked off and saw a man in the distance . He was just standing there , watching us . He looked like he was wearing a black suit , so I immediately thought it was our culprit . I chased after him , but when I got to his spot , he was gone . I looked around , and I saw him , standing about 20 feet away from me . Tall . Long arms . No face . I just stared at him for minutes , unsure of what I was going to do or what he would do . My partner called my name from the distance , I turned to respond to him , and when I looked back at the culprit , he was gone . Simply vanished . Haven 't seen him since . Donnie : A few are . Most of them , they remained mentally unstable , unable to live normal lives . They had to be committed to psychiatric facilities . The few that are around , they grew up in healthy lives . They still come to talk to me , or other cops , about what happened , just to get things off their minds . Donnie : Well , normally I would say that 's a no - go . But our families have been friends for years , and I know I can trust you . Next time I hear from them , I 'll ask them if they 'd be willing to talk to you . We 'll say it 's for a project for school . So , Donnie has seen our tall friend . I gotta keep an eye on him , make sure he stays safe . Hopefully , I 'll hear from him soon and be able to talk to one of those missing persons . It will be a great help . My father is a firefighter / fire inspector / EMT . He has been working as an EMT for 25 years now . He also works in the same building as the police in my town . So needless to say , he , and myself , have been pretty close with the cops , him more . It made sense that if I wanted to talk to a cop about missing person 's cases in the area , my dad could help me set that up . But how to ask him ? I couldn 't simply walk up to him and say " Dad , I need to talk to a cop about missing persons because a creepy tall man with tentacles and a suit may be taking them all . " So I had to think of a somewhat clever lie . Me : " Dad , I know you 've wanted me to consider becoming a cop . I thought that if I do , I 'd like to specialize in missing person 's cases . Do you know if any of the cops in town have dealt with a lot of those , just so I can get info on the way it can be handled ? It will help me make a better decision on if I want to do it or not . " Dad : " Well , maybe you can try Donnie , his son . I 'm sure he has access to his dad 's files , and you know him well enough . I 'm sure he 'd be glad to help you out . " So , Dad gave me Donnie 's phone number . I called him when I got out of work tonight . He does have his father 's files , and a few of his own missing person 's cases he has worked on . He is off from work tomorrow , as am I . So I will be meeting with him for lunch to discuss everything . If I find the connections I 'm looking for , I may reveal a little more to him , but not enough to really drag him into it . Hopefully , this will open up the trail for me to find information I need to help others . Wish me luck . My father has had it for about 5 days , and now I 'm getting it . Perhaps that will explain everything with me getting sick . Passed out yesterday and was out for several hours . I feel so helpless now . It 's like , I can 't do anything to protect my family and my friends . But I will not give up . I will find a way to save her . I didnt sleep at all last night , and my phone shut off . I didnt get her text until I charged my phone after work today . I 'm getting sick now . Headache , coughing , exhaustion . I normally call her Sunday mornings to see if anything has happened . Its how I keep in touch with the other Runners and Fighters when I am away on the weekend . But something was wrong this morning . I got out of work at 7pm and rushed home . I immediately went onto the blogs to see what was going on . I read her last two posts . Something happened to her , I knew it . I ran out of the house and drove over to her place . I carefully looked inside , making sure there was nobody else around . I had my claw with me ( I still never leave without it ) , and I had it in my hand . I carefully looked around , but I saw nothing . That 's what time I started typing this . I passed out early last night , and woke up at around 2 , 2 : 30am . Thankfully I don 't have to be at work in the morning . I ended up waking up because of a dream . This dream was not my normal dream , and I think it 's a result of you know who . In my dream , I had woken up from sleeping , and I was apparently getting ready for a day out with friends from school . We were having some sort of reunion , and we had plans to go into NYC for the day . We were going to meet up at the Ripley 's Museum , which is only a few blocks from the Port Authority . So I take the bus from right by my house to get into the city . Normally , it takes about 30 minutes or so , if there is no traffic . I 'm on the bus , going through the Lincoln Tunnel , but when we get to the other side , I 'm not in NYC . At least , it wasn 't NYC of today , I believe . All around me , there were trees . Yes , trees . My immediate thought is that I need to get off the bus and away from them . But the bus won 't stop . It keeps driving . I look around , and I see , on the bus , everybody else is wearing a mask . I feel I 'm on a bus with all proxies now . Even the bus driver had a mask on . I 'm almost ready to crap myself , but then I realize something : it 's still a dream . I can still control certain aspects of it . So I reach under my seat , and I look to see if there is another mask for me . There is . I immediately put the mask on , so as not to attract unwanted attention . The bus finally makes a stop , right outside a large building . It looks like an old church of some kind , but I 'm not sure . Everybody starts getting off , and I decide to follow . Dream or not , I may get some information I can use . I walk with everybody into the church . This room is huge , though . I would say , there had to be at least 200 proxies . I sit down in one row , and I wait . The person next to me taps my shoulder . I turn , and this person whispers in my ear , " You aren 't one of them either , are you ? " It was in a female 's voice . I whisper back , " No , I 'm not . I 'm not sure how I got here honestly . " " Same here . I went to sleep , and I thought I was dreaming . This seems too real though . " She thought she was dreaming too . Could it be another fighter / runner that I just met ? Suddenly , everybody starts to stand up and begins chanting . The words they spoke are the exact same ones that the proxy said to me when I was attacked . Me and my new buddy followed , even though we didn 't know what we were saying . At the front of the church , in front of this podium , a black mass starts to appear . Slowly , I see tentacles coming out , and I realize that Slenderman is coming . Before I can make a break for it , a tentacle shoots forward and wraps itself around the girl next to me . Within seconds , her body goes limp . I look back up , and I see His face now peering in my direction . One of the other proxies grabs me , and he whispers in my ear , " He has plans for you . " Well , this weekend certainly was long and interesting . Now that I 'm home , I 'm able to catch up on all my blogs . My phone died on me this weekend , even though I fully charged it , so I couldn 't even call Kay and ask her for any updates . I was crying almost all weekend when nobody was around , for fear of Ava . But I got home tonight , checked my blogs and saw the first true good thing in awhile . I started crying again when I wrote that . She 's a tough little cookie , she is , and I am so happy that she is safe . Unfortunately , the same can 't be said for Reach at this point . Alive or dead , what he did was such a noble sacrifice for Ava , and no matter what happened , in my eyes , he regained his humanity right there . Reach , I pray you are alive , for Ava 's sake . Darby also decided to return to us . He has said he will not abandon us while we are still dealing with our enemy . Thank you , my friend . And I cannot wait for when you make our way out here . The good times we shall have . Jeff and Cheska are over in Germany now , trying to get more info on Der Ritter . Wishing them the best of luck and safety as well . As for my own updates , outside of crying and my phone dying . He just stood there , in the parking lot of my job . Staring at me . Well , as best as He could , considering He has no eyes . One arm was a normal looking arm , the other was a tentacle . He was simply waving it about in the air . Not hitting anybody or anything . Just kinda letting it flap in the wind . Almost like He was taunting me to come after Him again . I am not making that same mistake right now . I 'm not squaring off with Him until I can find another way to hurt Him . I slept over my girlfriend 's Saturday night . I still haven 't told her , she doesn 't need to know yet . It was about 3am that we finally went to sleep . She said she woke up at about 6 , and I wasn 't in the bed . She walked through the house and couldn 't find me . She opened the door and looked outside , and she saw me just sitting on my car , staring up into the sky . She thought that I just needed time to think and let me be . I " woke up " at around 10am , back in her bed . So , since my little fight , I have been coughing and now the memory loss . So , what ? Am I going to become a proxy now ? Am I going to be stuck fighting for the tentacled mass of shit that plagues our lives ? Am I going to end up coming after the people I care about , just because He asks me to ? No . I won 't allow it . I know I 'm not exactly the most stable of minds , and I know I 'm not the most physically strong person . I 'm nowhere near as strong or smart or stable or helpful as some of you out there : Kay , Jeff & Cheska , Robert , Zeke , Celeste , Ava , Reach , Thage , Darby , so many others to list . But I can 't leave you all behind . Not while I 'm still alive and can do something to fight back , to help you all out . You all keep me sane in this , and holding onto you all , I think I may survive . So , things are going haywire all over the place . Ava and Reach ventured into the quarry . They got separated . Ava is scared . I 'm scared we may lose her . Milo from TribeTwelve posted his Thanksgiving footage . Oh my god . It 's going crazy for him there . Mom : Well , it woke me up a few times . And it 's not the first time either . You 've always coughed a lot in your sleep , sick or not . Since you were in high school . I got scared by that . I cough when I 'm sick , and that 's normally it . If I cough in my sleep , I wake up from it . But I 've been coughing in my sleep since HS , and not remembered it ? Thats a little scary . Especially since this past weekend . Dream update , good and bad : I copied down more of the book in my dream . Summary = Whoever this Guardian is , he will be the one to unite people to take down what is called " The Threat " and his army . He has to be exposed to The Threat before being able to do so . This could reference becoming Hallowed and coming back . The next section talks about The Threat and his army . They are referenced as Agents that either willingly go with him or are seduced into his control . There is also the reference of those who know are more likely to be targets . That was the last I got . Then something else happened . The other night , I went into my dream to try and get more . The door to the study was sealed shut . I broke the door in , and the study was destroyed . It looked like it had been in a fire . I searched frantically and found the book , but all the pages were completely burnt . The book is gone , so I dont know if I can get anymore information from it . Oh god , while typing this , I 'm almost in tears , worrying about Ava . I pray you are safe and come back to us . I don 't need anybody dying on me . Not now . Please Ava . Don 't die . The truth is , when I was first introduced to the world of Slenderman , I honestly thought it was kinda dumb . I made this blog as a joke , expecting to perhaps get a few trolls to entertain me . But then everything started happening : my dreams , my girlfriend having dreams , her coughing fits ( which she still has ) , the notes on my car , the proxy attack , and most recently , an attack from You - Know - Who Himself . It became so real , and for the first time in my life , I can honestly and truly say I 'm scared for myself . I was lucky to survive the attack , but what about next time ? What if I have to deal with multiple proxies at once ? What if Slenderman decides to use more tentacles next time in his attack on me ? All of this makes me want to give up . But this leads me to my second confession . I now have her permission to do this . I am revealing the identity of the person who introduced me to Slenderman in the first place . Her name is Kay . She has her own blog , titled A Wand and A Prayer . She didn 't want to be revealed , mainly due to not wanting unnecessary attention brought upon her while preparing for her experiments . I granted her this , and waited until she would have been ready to interview with me for my blog . But this weekend , something went terribly wrong . She encountered Slenderman as well . He escaped while she conducted her experiment , but left a proxy in His place . Needless to say , she survived her encounter , but at a terrible cost to her body . I went to visit her last night . I cannot even begin to describe her condition . I 've seen her in bad shape before , but this was nothing short of painful to look at . I cried when I found out she was attacked , and cried again when I saw her . I immediately felt so useless . I know that I am the youngest of the three kids , I know that she is the oldest , but I am the only boy . I still feel it 's my job to protect my sisters , and with this happening , I failed . As scared as I am , as much of a fraidy cat I 'm turning into , I cannot give up . I have to take care of my sister , even though she 'll probably be looking out for me just as much . I take a look down at my arm and see the scar Slenderman left on me . It still burns a little bit , but it 's healing . I look at it , and I realize something : I actually survived a direct encounter with him . Sure , it was by dumb luck , but I did survive . That has to count for something . I 'm lending Kay my cane - sword for now . She needs it more than I do . Both for walking , and for defense . I can manage without it . I have other weapons . I spoke to Darby earlier . He asked me to give a message to his friends here . He promises that he will return to us . He isn 't sure when , but he will come back . He needs to test something . Darby , if you read this , again , I wish you the best of luck . @ Anybody else who reads this , make sure to stay as safe as you can be . He is out there still . Never assume you are safe , because once you are complacent , it 's easier for Him to get you . If any of you are interested in keeping in touch off the blog , please let me know how to in a comment . I want to be able to stay in touch outside the blog too . |
Catherine fumbled with her keys and finally got the door open . She threw her umbrella in the corner and removed her rain - soaked coat . Mark set his briefcase down and helped her out of the wet garment before placing it on the coat rack . Catherine walked further into her apartment while Mark stood questioningly by the door , dripping wet . The whole moment felt surreal - the unrelenting rain , the warmth of her home , the intimacy of her company . He glanced out at the balcony , wishing he could see the view . It was probably spectacular . Catherine smiled at him and moved her eyes to the dark fireplace . Inside , she was beaming . . . and breaking . All of this was so unfamiliar - these feelings , the small talk , the uncomfortable pauses . Maybe she shouldn 't have invited him in . The name that used to thrill her now exhausted her . Four years - four years it had been and he still hadn 't touched her , hadn 't kissed her , still hadn 't directly told her that he loved her . They had come close - many times - but he always pulled away . He always pulled away . The sweet , reverent way he always dropped his head used to inspire tenderness in her ; now it made her want to scream . What she thought would be the love of her life was now only a friendship - an exquisite one , for sure , but still , technically , a friendship . The urgency was gone . They had slipped into comfortable complacency . They never thought to push the boundaries … or question them . And Mark … he really was a nice man , perfect for her in every way . Never married , he was from humble beginnings in Arkansas and was now one of the best FBI agents in the New York area . She had liked Mark the first time she had seen him and her curiosity had only increased over the last few weeks . She respected him and admired him and knew he felt the same way . If it wasn 't for Vincent , she would … She didn 't know what to do anymore . Vincent was still her first choice , her only choice . But she needed more - she needed something . She wanted to be with him forever , but if it meant never being able to touch him , or kiss him , or wake up to him in the morning … she knew herself - it would never be enough . And now she actually liked someone - the kind of man Vincent had always pushed her toward . Vincent never spoke anymore of the life he had always said was waiting for her . She almost missed it - at least he showed some fire , even if it was to tell her that he was wrong for her , that she should find someone else . Catherine finished toweling off , realizing she had kept Mark waiting for nearly five minutes . She hurried out to find him sitting in front of the fireplace , his face tilted upward in contemplation . He turned around and smiled when she returned . While part of her resisted , part of her nearly ran to his side . He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned a couple of buttons on his dress shirt while she had been gone . He was so close ; she knew he would welcome her touch . She was so tempted . " I 'm not daft , Cathy . I can sense a reluctance on your part . Maybe you aren 't sure ; maybe there is another man in your life … I find it hard to believe that there isn 't . But , if there is a chance , even the slightest chance , that you might be interested in me , I would really like to explore it , " he finished , waiting . She looked at him and wished , for once , that her life wasn 't so complicated . She couldn 't remember the last time something had been easy . And it would be easy , so easy to lean over and … " Why don 't you think about it ? I have to testify tomorrow , but then my part in the case will be over . When the trial is done , call me . We 'll go to dinner . My treat … " he added , touching her face fleetingly . " I really like you , Cathy . A friendship would be wonderful - if it was more , well , that would be even better . But no pressure - I want you to think about it . If you decided to date me , I would want it to be without hesitation . " " I moved out there to help my sister out ; she 's been fighting leukemia for years . Her husband left her . With three girls and no source of income … well , it 's been rough on her . I gave up my place a couple of months ago . " " It 's no problem , Mark … I 'm … glad to have you here , " she blurted out , before hurrying to her room . She closed the doors behind her and flung herself on the bed , burying her face into a pillow . She knew Vincent had felt it . He could feel everything . What was she doing ? This was not the way to go about things . She had to talk to him , to tell him that she was interested in someone else . She knew he would encourage her , though . He wouldn 't stand in her way . He wouldn 't even tell her if it hurt him . He never did . He never would . That was precisely the problem . So many nevers … she needed something to believe in again . If Vincent could not be her dream , she needed to find a new one . It 's not what she wanted - it was what she needed . She was dying inside . After four years , though it broke her heart to admit it , their dream wasn 't enough anymore . He replayed the night 's events over and over in his head . He did not know the details , but he knew what she felt . He knew there was a man in her apartment . He knew he was still there . He had felt it when they … kissed . Something had profoundly changed tonight - he was no fool . He could feel her turmoil , though it was nowhere near what she had experienced when she had kissed Elliot so many years ago . Then , she had been agonized , miserable … wishing for his lips while settling for Elliot 's . Now , there was only guilt , not remorse ; acquiescence , not struggle - he had the nagging feeling that she had stopped it because it was the " right " thing to do , not because she wanted to . He never expected this day to come , not because he was surprised that she met someone , but that they would have held onto their dream for so long . He had expected her to leave him months , if not years , ago . He had expected to be alone , always yearning for her . He was not alone - but the yearning … it had worn him down . He had no fight anymore - like a castaway , he had long ago abandoned any hope of rescue and fallen where he stood , letting the waves roll over him , again and again , only to be buried in the sand or finally carried out to sea . Tears started to fill his eyes . This was almost worse than losing her - to see their love wither and become something mundane , a shadow of its former brilliance . Their love did not hold them together anymore - habit did . In two days , they would celebrate four years of being together , but instead of filling him with happiness and gratitude , the date seemed foreboding . Happy just to have her in his life , he had never let himself desire more . He had been content - he still was . He loved her no less today than he did when he had found her so long ago . He loved her more . He never believed he deserved her and was thankful for every moment she spent with him . He supposed he had been savoring every moment with her , always knowing it could be their last . Because he knew he lacked the ability to truly make her happy , he had never even offered more , for he knew he could never follow through on such an offer . He knew she had always wanted more , and he had assumed she would eventually find it with someone else . But even if she had chosen another , he never thought their flame would die - he thought their love was enduring , indestructible . Still , he had done nothing to keep that flame alive . Once a roaring firestorm that consumed everything in its path with its wild intensity and strength , their love was no more than the fragile , flickering light of the single candle beside his bed . In one breath , it could be snuffed out . One breath and total darkness . Could he really let her go ? Could he ever find peace knowing she walked the streets above him ? He knew he would be lost without her , but what could he do to rekindle the flame ? Was he really willing to do now what he had never done before ? Could the answer be something as simple as a kiss ? He sighed heavily . It was that simple , for a kiss would be so much more than that - it would be hope . Would she accept one from him now ? Did she still want him ? Did she still love him ? Was it too late or was that original spark still there , buried deep inside her , crying to be stoked ? He rolled over and glanced at the note he had written earlier , lying on his bedside table . It was an invitation for her , to accompany him on a trip to the Crystal Cavern , something she had always wanted to do . He had always promised her , but had never followed up on it . He had wanted to surprise her for their anniversary . But the thought of seeing her made his stomach turn . She had kissed someone else . She had feelings for someone else . How could he face her ? He had neglected her for so long , space had opened up inside her and now someone was threatening to step in . He had to decide now , once and for all , what he was willing to do for their dream , before the decision ceased to be his . " May I come in , my son ? " " Yes , of course , " Vincent told him , sitting up in bed . He quickly lit a few candles . " Vincent , you are prudent and rational . It was the right choice … the only choice , really … " " How can you believe that , Father ? " Vincent demanded . He looked up at Father then , eyes burning . " Vincent , I would be remiss to deny the love you and Catherine share for each other . It 's apparent and … quite remarkable . There is no doubt that what you share is meant to be treasured , but really , again , what kind of life could you have ? Don 't you think it 's time to let her go ? " Vincent leapt out of bed so fast , Father jumped in his seat . Vincent was on his feet , pacing , quickly , along the run of the rug . Suddenly , he spun , and looked directly at Father . " I must question your motives , Father . When Margaret came back into your life , there is no doubt you regretted your decision to let her go . Must I follow in your path ? " " Vincent , " Father interrupted . " Listen to me . All it did was remind me of what a fool I had been in the first place . I was damn lucky that I got another chance to see her ; I would never change it . But to have what I had always wanted for a few moments , only to lose her so quickly after … it … " Father trailed off , and dropped his head , sighing . " Here is my advice , " he went on . " It matters not what you decide . The fact is , you must decide something . You are both people of action , Vincent . You must do something . A man cannot love with mere words . " " My boy , " he told Vincent . " Surely you must know that whatever my opinion on matters of the heart , I only want you to be happy . I will do all I can to help you achieve it . " " Vincent , my son , " Father sighed . " You are a smart boy . I have no doubt you will find the right words … it 's … " Father raised his cane in farewell . Vincent blew out the candles and settled onto his side . He would have Geoffrey deliver the note to Catherine 's apartment in the morning . He couldn 't go there tonight - what if … Vincent closed his eyes . He still didn 't know what he should do , or how . All he could think about was Catherine . All he could think about was her lying in bed - and pray that she was alone . The elevator doors opened and Catherine trudged toward her apartment . She was exhausted . The case , Vincent , Mark , the uncertainty , the doubts , the regret - it was consuming her . She was praying a long bath and lots of wine would help to dull the pain . When she opened her door , she wasn 't surprised to see the note . He knew as well as she did that they had reached the precipice - that something had to change . She was terrified to see him though , to find the words to say what he already knew had transpired - she never thought something like this would happen , so blindly had she believed in their dream , even as it unraveled before her . She put her purse down and paused before opening the envelope . His notes to her used to make her head spin , even a single word felt like an embrace . But she knew this one would be different . The moment she opened it , she started to cry . His handwriting was off , shaky , nothing like the beautiful script she had become accustomed to . She forced herself to read it . But what he hadn 't written - that made her tremble and her tears increased ten - fold . She could only imagine how difficult it had been for him to write it and all that he had made himself hold back . It almost seemed like he expected her to refuse . Hey , Cathy … it 's Mark . Hope things went well the rest of the day . I 'm heading back to Jersey now and just wanted to say thanks for letting me crash at your place . It was a thoughtful gesture and I really appreciate it … I … uh … hope to hear from you soon … and … I … um … have a great weekend . Bye , Cathy … She used to welcome this feeling , desired it , longed for it , believing she could not survive without it . But could she hold it anymore ? It felt so heavy and their love had always filled her with light , not darkness . What did all this mean ? Was she supposed to let go ? Explore something lighter … even easier … with Mark , When he reached the sub - basement , he set down his pack and sighed heavily . He was suppressing the Bond . If she wasn 't coming , he didn 't want to feel it inside her . It bothered him that it wasn 't difficult for him to ignore the Bond . When had that become so easy ? Something stirred deep inside his belly , causing him to catch his breath . The next moment , he heard her boot hit the metal rung of the ladder . Love roared up inside him ; he had to fight every urge to pull her off that ladder and into his arms . He should proceed with gentleness and not overwhelm her . " Shall we ? " he asked softly . He put his pack on and slowly started walking away . Catherine couldn 't help but feel it was a premonition of what was to come . This was painful , almost unbearable . The elephant in the room could not have been larger . Vincent was beside himself in agony . He was trying to focus on the gesture of his love . He still didn 't know what he was going to do to show her what she meant to him . But all he could think about was the kiss . He needed to ask her , he needed to know , but he was terrified of the truth . His heart was beating fast and he was out of breath . He hadn 't been able to eat since lunch the day before . He felt shaky . " In thirty minutes , there is a way station with food and beds . The cavern is only a few hours ' walk from there . We can see it in the morning , " he told her , his voice husky . " Yes , I 'm fine … " Vincent whispered . What was wrong with him ? He had never felt such … what was it ? He felt dizzy . " I 'm fine ! " he snapped . He jumped to his feet in a blur . Catherine had never seen him move so fast . It disturbed her . She stood up then and walked right up to him . Her finger rose to point at him , but she thought better of it , and lowered it . " Do you want to hide forever , Vincent ? " she blurted out . " If there was any time you needed to talk to me , this is the time , Vincent , " she urged him , and not gently . There was an edge to her voice . He huffed and spun from her . But when he reached down to grab his pack , a stabbing pain hit his right temple . He stumbled and helplessly tossed forward , onto the ground . His head slammed against a protruding rock and pain shot through his body like electricity . During this , Catherine had turned away , trying to smother her urge to reach out to him and help . She felt heartless , but she couldn 't help but think this was providence . If he ran from her now , it was at his own peril . Vincent clutched his head , rolled over , and sat up against the wall . He was mortified and defeated . He breathed in heavily and cried out in frustration . The sound echoed throughout the tunnel . Rapidly breathing in and out , he struggled to calm himself . Catherine turned and stood above him , her arms crossed across her chest . Finally … he spoke . she thought . Suddenly , she didn 't want to reconcile - she wanted to be home alone right now . Not with Mark , not with Vincent … she wanted to be alone . She wanted to run from here this very minute . She quickly glanced over at her pack - her keys were in there . " That 's what I wanted to do , Catherine . Run . I tried - look where it got me , " he broke in , interrupting her thoughts . She was being cruel , she knew . He didn 't deserve it , but it seemed more appropriate than rushing over and kissing him , which kept crossing her mind . " You always said it was more than a dream to you , " he gently reminded her , trying to ignore the other things she had said . " Are we going to fight over semantics , then ? Are you trying to convince me that you don 't believe dreams can come true because it goes against their dictionary meaning ? I don 't believe that . Dreams can come true and I wasn 't the one standing in the way of ours ! " " You know what , Vincent ! God , you just don 't get it . I don 't think you will ever understand … " she dismissed him . " Not understand ? Catherine , I feel everything you do , as deeply as you do ! Everything ! I felt that kiss . I have felt every time I disappointed you , every night you have cried in your bed , every night you longed for me to come to you ! " " Well , what are you waiting for ? It 's been in front of you for four years now . I would think that would be enough of an indication that you are ' permitted ' to kiss me , " she said , bitterly . He flew to his feet and stormed over to her , seizing her in his arms . He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly , heavy with the passion Catherine had always known was inside him . Her mouth opened and accepted his probing tongue as her hands snaked into his hair . His lips crushed onto hers and pressed against them tightly . But he was reaching for his pack again and she knew the moment had passed . She huffed in frustration - mad at him and surprised at herself . When had she lost all patience with him ? When had she become so hostile toward him ? In her pain , she blamed him entirely , but she knew that couldn 't be true . Nothing was ever that simple . He had already started walking down the tunnel , so she walked over to where her pack was . When she reached for it though , she noticed something on her hand . Was it dirt ? Was it … blood ? " Vincent ? " she cried out . She pulled the pack from his shoulders and rolled him over . He was so still … and he wasn 't answering her . Her hands frantically moved over his body , searching for an injury , but she couldn 't find it . Where was he hurt ? She would bet a million bucks he had a first aid kit in his pack . Leveraging her weight against him and anchoring his head against the side of the pack , she tore through his pack . She quickly found what she was looking for and opened the kit . She took out some antiseptic and then paused . Was this the right thing to do ? She put the sweatshirt back over the wound and pressed firmly . She didn 't know what to do . She glanced around and didn 't see any pipes nearby . Should she leave him and try to find some to call for help ? But the thought of leaving him was horrible . She couldn 't do it . Besides , they had already passed any tunnels that were even remotely familiar to her . She couldn 't risk getting lost . " Please , Vincent . . . please ! " she whispered . " I 'm sorry for everything , for doubting , for hurting you . Please wake up ! Please ! " He was on his back , on the ground , and … Catherine was lying on top of him . He could feel the wound on the back of his head and his mouth was dry . He remembered what had happened . But before he could analyze it , Catherine slowly moved on top of him , which affected him - profoundly . She was lying along the length of him , nearly flush with his entire body . She felt heavy , like a blanket . He was moved by the gesture , soothed by the warmth , but he was also completely aroused - completely . Too hurt to panic , he relaxed . She was asleep - he could calm himself down . less painful this could have been for both of them . If he wanted to be with her , he needed to commit , not hold himself back . He needed to be present and attentive to her needs , all of them . He could not ask for more opportunities than he had already had - until now , they had seemed as numerous and endless as the pages in a long novel . But they weren 't . He was at the end of the story and had filled the middle with nothing but pain , unnecessary pain . How could he have let himself become less than what he was before ? How could he have taken her for granted - how was that even possible ? He should have just touched her , kissed her , done something . It was the deed . Too many words had been spoken , but nothing had ever been made real . " I 'm sorry , Vincent ! I 'm so sorry . I was so worried . You wouldn 't wake up ! I was so scared ! " He was so disappointed . He had been so close to her and now she was gone and maybe he would never have the chance again . He sighed deeply , trying to clamp down on his hurt feelings . " I 'm sorry . I was just so worried ! " she said again . Catherine lay down the torch and reached for him in the dark . Her hands landed on his stomach and then moved upward to his chest . She quickly worked her fingers underneath his vest , found the matches , and pulled them out . But it wasn 't until she was withdrawing her hand that she noticed Vincent was unnaturally still and holding his breath . And suddenly , there in the dark , Catherine realized what had happened . He had been trying to … move forward . He had been kissing her and their bodies had been so close . She shivered . She had ruined the moment - completely ! " Yes , go ahead , " she told him , pushing the matches into his hand . She wanted to put the torch down and crawl back on top of him , but she stopped herself . Maybe this wasn 't the time ; he was hurt . Vincent sighed . He didn 't have a choice , but this wound wasn 't just something he could shake off . His head had hit jagged rock - he didn 't know the extent of the injury , but he knew how it felt . He could barely move without feeling woozy . He was afraid that if he tried to stand up , he would only fall back to the ground . And he was furious with himself . He had only gotten this injury from being obstinate and now it threatened to ruin their entire trip . If only he had found the courage to face this a year ago , two years ago , even a few hours ago … if only … He wanted to be strong . He wanted to face this like a man . He wanted her heart back , all of it , but not like this . In a last ditch attempt to salvage his pride , he tried to roll over and away from her . But Catherine stopped him and pulled him onto his back again . She lay down next to him and carefully slid her arm under his neck , using her free hand to brush the hair away from his face before laying her arm across his chest . Vincent felt her face press against his cheek , which only made him cry Her compassion , her understanding , just the fact that she was being nice to him when he was hurting so badly - it was too much . Choking on his tears , he let out a roar , weak , but overflowing with frustration and regret . It ended quietly . He could not let her go . He couldn 't . But now - he didn 't know how to hold onto her . Each passing moment , he felt further away from her . " You just have to do it , Vincent . You can 't spend the night here . We need to eat and I should look at your injury . " She wanted to cry now . He was really hurt . She was worried . They hadn 't talked yet . What was going to happen ? " Do you want my help ? " she asked , tentatively . She pulled back from him and though he could feel it through the Bond , he watched his words play out on her face . She wanted to be excited - and she was - but the words were too late . They were simply too late . He wasn 't sure if he could bring her back to him . He chastised himself for only offering her words - however overdue they might be . He needed to kiss her - that would make this better . But he couldn 't . It was impossible . No matter how much he wanted to , he wasn 't sure he could even stand , much less hold her or kiss her . She was still looking at him , like she was expecting an answer - to her kiss or her silence , he did not know . Her mouth had dropped open and she had the most vulnerable look on her face . " We must go , " he said , grimly , pushing himself up . It wasn 't as bad as he thought it was going to be , but he knew he couldn 't walk without holding onto the wall or - " Hold onto me , " she instructed him . " The pack , " he reminded her . " Is there anything in there that we can 't find at the way station ? " she asked , propping him up . " Okay , well , let me see , " she asked , sitting down beside him . She pulled his hair away from the wound and tried not to be alarmed . She had been wrong . It wasn 't a small cut . It was a nasty , jagged cut . It obviously needed stitches . " Vincent , " she swallowed . " It 's bad . You need Father . I wouldn 't even know where to begin . Now I am thinking I shouldn 't have even moved you . " " Catherine , " he managed . " You did the right thing . We selected … these locations … because they all have a direct line to the pipe chamber . " " Catherine , I … " Vincent whispered , drawing her attention back to him . In her worry and desire to help , she hadn 't noticed that Vincent was close to passing out again . She felt his forehead and his skin seemed to burn her hand . She jumped to her feet and grabbed the scissors from the medical kit . She cut the rest of the laces on his vest and pushed it to the side . Then she started on his shirts , cutting them from the bottom up , promising she would replace them . After she composed herself , she found the pipe and sent a call for help . She came back over to him and sat down . She was worried about him , worried about their future . She still wasn 't sure what she should do . What if he was exactly the same when he recovered ? What if he completely dismissed what they had briefly shared ? She touched his face , relieved that he seemed to have cooled off . She went over to the cupboard and took out some nuts and jerky . She grabbed her canteen , pulled a chair over to his side , and started eating . Catherine sat at her desk , staring at the deposition of the defense 's expert witness , trying to find discrepancies in her assessment of the forensic evidence . She would be cross - examining her in two days and though her case was strong , this witness was formidable . As committed to this case as she was though , she found herself reading and re - reading the same page over and over . Finally , giving up , she closed the file , grabbed her mug of coffee , and went over to the window closest to her desk and stared outside , still not really seeing . She knew she should go to him , but something was holding her back . She always went to him , but this time was firm in the belief that he should come to her , injured or not . She knew how quickly he healed , though that hardly seemed fair . Her lack of compassion for him bothered her , but she couldn 't change how she felt . Her faith in their happy ending had only faltered further since she had left him . For all she knew , the accident could have been a sign that they were not supposed to tread down the path of realizing their dream . She had wanted it so much , for so long , she felt incapable of deciding - objectively - whether or not it would truly lead them to happiness . " Just something quick , " he assured her . " I 've got to babysit for my sis tonight so she can go see a movie . " " Is she feeling any better ? " She laughed , too , surprised at how happy she was to see Mark . She would have thought after … no . She refused to think about Vincent right now . After a few blocks , they arrived at their destination . As expected , the ten - table Spanish restaurant was packed to the gills , even at this early hour . The place was always surrounded by hopefuls wanting to get in . To her complete surprise , Mark walked right up to the door and opened it for her . An elderly , elegant woman swept past Catherine and gathered Mark in her arms like a long lost son . She ran her hands over his face and gave him kisses on both cheeks , telling him how skinny he was , how she would feed him heartily . Catherine couldn 't help but smile . Desiderio snapped her fingers , which felt pretty corny to Catherine , but suddenly they were surrounded by waiters and being ushered over to the very table she herself would have selected . Taking her coat and her belongings , the waiters sat them down with great flourish . Red wine , sparkling water , and warm bread followed shortly after . " I 'm sorry , " she sighed . " I like you … very much … but there is someone else . There has been for a while , but … " she trailed off , not knowing how to finish . " She wanted to move to Paris , " he began . " She was an attaché for the French Ambassador , which is how she ended up in New York . But the embassy wanted her to go back to France and work directly with the American Ambassador . It was a promotion , and somewhat of a dream come true . She had been homesick for years , " he explained . " I was scared … " he revealed . " Aside from training and vacation , and growing up in Arkansas , I have never left New York . I 'm scared of living in a foreign country . " " Yes , her parents , a brother . Grandparents . She had found us a wonderful apartment . She even looked up an old college roommate for me so I would know someone in Paris … " " She did , " he agreed , sadly . " Just because I was scared , I lost the best thing that ever happened to me . I 'm a fool . " " Yes , I am , " he countered . " She stayed in New York for years for me and I wouldn 't return the favor . Paris is one of the most beautiful cities in the world . I would have been very happy . But I wouldn 't even try it . I just refused , " he finished , dejected . " That I loved her and missed her , too . That I would think about it , " he sighed . " I don 't know what I should do . " " You should go to her . Right now . Like leave - this - restaurant - go - pack - a - bag - and - get - on - a - plane kind of right now . How can you not ? " " Yes , it can , " she replied firmly . " Mark , the love of your life wants you to be with her in the most romantic city in the world , has gotten you a better job , and wants to be your wife , and you don 't even have to find an apartment ? I 'm surprised at you . " " You 're afraid of choosing love . Maybe you are too rational or maybe you are afraid of being happy . Maybe the thought of leaving everything behind to follow the woman you love scares the hell out of you . Whatever the reason - it 's the wrong thing to do . You have to face your fears and choose love . So many people never find anyone - you have . You shouldn 't throw that away . " Mark closed his eyes and pulled his hand back . Just then , the waiter brought their food and Catherine sat up straighter in her seat . When he left , Mark looked at her again . And suddenly , she wanted to open up to him . What she felt for Mark was not romantic love , but it was love . She cared about him . He felt … like a brother . She had always wanted an older brother . She nodded again . It felt so good to finally tell someone , she almost started crying . She shoveled some food in her mouth and tried to calm down . " Well , I can say from experience that I waited a while longer than most guys . I was so focused on studying and getting out of Arkansas , I never let myself even look at girls . I didn 't lose my virginity until I was twenty - one . Not that that 's super late , it just is in comparison to most guys . " When I finally found someone I really cared for , I was really scared . I really wanted to … do it , you know , but I was afraid of disappointing her , that I would be too inexperienced . Is that what 's holding him back ? " " Too long , " she replied . " I 'm done . I can 't wait anymore . Words alone can 't express what I feel for him anymore . It seems like we are drifting apart , that we lost our chance . " " I don 't . But I want you to go ahead and give it to me , " she joked , repeating him word for word . They laughed . " Why not ? He can 't expect you to wait forever . It 's not like making love with you is the worst thing he could ever do , " he reasoned with her . " It doesn 't matter . You deserve to be loved , Cathy . He needs to put his fears aside ! " he finished . His eyes dropped . " I should know , " he sighed . Catherine stared at him , as though she was seeing him - and her situation - with new eyes . Maybe he was right . The thought of giving Vincent an ultimatum was one that had never crossed her mind , but maybe that 's exactly what he needed . She had never wanted to push him or make him feel uncomfortable , and so had given him all the space and time in the world . But things were at a standstill now - someone had to rattle the cage . The heady weightlessness of having nothing to lose filled her with a cacophony of feelings - hope , love for Vincent , desire , faith in him , in their dream , all of it . Warmth spread through her , a warmth she had never felt before . She wished he were here right now . She would throw her arms around him , kiss him , and not let him go , not let him turn away or make excuses , until he really understood how much she loved him and wanted him . Like hugging a scared child - they might push you away at first , but they would eventually relent … and feel all the better for it . She hoped he would come to see her soon . He had to know what she was feeling , how excited she was , how much she loved him . Surely he would come now . He had promised to make this right . Cathy plowed through the workday , staying late to finish her research . When she got home , it was already dark . She put in a tape of Corelli , warmed up her leftovers from the night before , and settled onto the couch with a hot cup of tea and the takeout container . She loved Corelli . His " Concerto Grosso in C Minor " never failed to make her pause , whatever she was doing . Tonight , it was almost enough to make her cry . Cathy , it 's Mark . I just wanted to say thank you so much for last night . " Last night ? " Vincent asked , incredulous , immediately pulling away from her . It was amazing - you are amazing . And you were right - I am going to choose love . I have to run , but I will call you soon . Thanks again ! Good night ! " Yes , I do , " he countered . " I felt it . I felt your conversation . How happy you were , how firm you were in your convictions . How excited you were … the warmth , the … love you felt . I felt it all ! " " Fine . You kissed me in the tunnel and for a few wonderful seconds , I was the happiest I have ever been . But then you pulled away . You always pull away ! " " I want you to kiss me . I want you to touch me . I want us to make love . I want us to live together and be a family . That 's what I have always wanted - always ! " " Dammit ! That 's not fair ! " she shouted at him . She grabbed the fabric on his shirt sleeves and shook him . He immediately stepped away . " You can twist this back on me as much as you want , but this is about you . It 's been four years , Vincent ! I love you … with all of my heart , and I want to be with you more than anything , but you refuse to touch me . You won 't let me touch you . Our love is dying ! " " Listen to me ! " she insisted . " I have waited so long for you . So long ! Until it nearly killed me . It 's killing me now ! You really think I would just flutter off with someone else without reason ? " " You have , Catherine . You kissed him . If you really loved me … " he stopped himself then , mad at himself for saying such things out loud . " I didn 't do anything , Vincent ! You have no idea what happened last night . I don 't think it matters to you . You can only see this one way , with me as the bad guy . Yes , he kissed me before , and yes , I responded , but only because I am desperate for something ! Last night … " " I should go , " he muttered . The jealousy he felt - it was burning through him like venom . He couldn 't let her see him like this . " All I do is hurt you . I cannot … be who you want me to be . I can 't give you what you need , Catherine . I can 't . " Vincent closed his eyes and sighed again . " Catherine , " he said , impatiently . " I want to … realize our dream . I 'm sorry . I just don 't feel … ready . " Vincent stared at her intently . He opened his mouth and then closed it again . After a few painful moments , he looked toward the door . She knew the answer before he even said it . Vincent didn 't even acknowledge the sentries as he made his way back to the central tunnels . He took a circuitous route , running at full speed , trying to forget her last words to him . Once he reached his chamber , he was exhausted . He removed his clothes and sunk into his bathing pool , finding little comfort in the hot water . Vincent bathed quickly and returned to his chamber . He didn 't want to write , or read , or even think . He wanted out of this misery . He got into bed , determined to sleep . He was standing on a beach . The ocean was choppy and loud . He looked down at his feet , amazed by the sensation of sand between his toes . He stared up at the sun , squinting at its brightness . But his feet wouldn 't move . And then his mouth wouldn 't open . Frozen in place , he watched her go out further , laughing as the waves crashed over her . " Trust me , Vincent ! " she called . But Vincent still couldn 't move and then he couldn 't see . He wanted to tell her that he trusted her , but he couldn 't speak . " Vincent ! Come with me , trust me , please ! Vincent ! " Vincent woke up with a start , breathing heavily . His nightclothes were damp , though he felt a chill deep inside him . The sheets and comforter were on the floor , pillows too . Total chaos surrounded him . His heart was beating too hard . The dream , he remembered . Vincent jumped out of bed and hurried over to his bookshelf . One of the young women had left a book with him the other day . It was a dream dictionary . Violent waves indicate that you are seeking guidance , looking to nature for existential answers . If they are crashing over you , you have made a mistake in an important decision , but there is the opportunity to be cleansed . If you are watching them from afar , you have made a terrible error , a potentially fatal error , regarding a significant decision . He understood . When Catherine came into his life , all she had was his voice . She had trusted him - almost implicitly - when she had been at her most vulnerable . Just a stranger 's voice and she had believed . He remembered how good it had felt to be trusted by her . How could he deny her the chance to help him face his own fears ? Not only was he denying her affection , he was not giving her a chance to help him . He was denying her that joy of being trusted . This struck him as unforgivable . Never mind the other reasons , the excuses - it was wrong to deny her that experience . In every essence of the word , he owed her . When she stood up , he could see that she had been out running . Her hair was all over the place and her skin sparkled . He swallowed hard , wanting very much to touch her right now . She saw him before he had the chance to knock . He saw her make fists with her hands and take a deep breath . Looking him in the eye , she made her way to the balcony . She brushed past him , not saying anything . He watched her stare out at the city . After a moment , he slowly walked over and stood beside her , not speaking for a few moments . " No , there is no need to explain . What , did you have a dream about how we shouldn 't be together and came over to plead your case some more ? I don 't want to hear it anymore . You left last night , after I begged you not to … and now you want to talk about a dream ? " Vincent , I am tired of dreams . I 'm so tired of them . If this has taught me anything , it 's that dreams don 't matter . They don 't ! " " You don 't believe that , " he reasoned with her . Slowly it dawned on him . This was the moment . This was the decision . There was still time . He could do this . He could make this right . He glanced inside , considering his options . He wanted to go in there right now . He wanted to hold her in his arms . He wanted to … touch her . He wanted to walk in there and kiss her . Catherine stood trembling in the shower . Trying not to cry only lasted a second . She leaned against the wall and traced the lines in the tile with her fingers , willing the hot water to help her feel better . It was over . It was really over . After everything they had been through , this is how it was going to end . All those years of respectful distance , brief touches , moments of visceral longing , the dance - the constant dance around the thing they desired most . All of it was over . This was going to end and he would always think she had felt that way about Mark . If there was ever a time she could have reached through the Bond and told him what she was actually thinking , she wished it were now . She wanted him to know … and now he never would . She was still crying , her throat tight , her air choked , as she pulled him closer to her . Her hands rose to his face . Itching with years ' old desire to explore his beautiful face , her fingers traced his features . The water showered over them as they kissed . Catherine had never experienced a sensation such as this . It was like she was standing on a tightrope , a line between dreams and reality . Was she dreaming ? Oh God , she was not dreaming , she was not dreaming . Catherine groaned when Vincent 's tongue pressed between her lips . She pulled him down and rose onto her toes in an attempt to get closer to him . They clung to each other like vines . Vincent suddenly pulled back . He pushed the hair from her face and looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time . Maybe he was . They didn 't look like themselves - they had never seen such blatant desire on each other 's faces before . Catherine stared at him , disbelieving , as he ran his hand lightly over her shoulder . He had taken off his cloak and vest - nothing else . She saw them on the floor behind her , resting on top of her clothes . His boots lay in the doorway . This was so surreal . He stood before her , his hair covering his face . She pushed it back , looking deep into his eyes . She needed to see him right now . Him . Not shadows and sighs . Realizing what she wanted , Vincent quickly shed his clothes before he even knew what he was doing . When they were off , he blanched . What would she … ? His chest seized in a panic . And then Catherine stepped toward him and embraced him , an embrace they had experienced hundreds of times before - their embrace . Vincent started to relax , finding comfort in the familiarity of it . He kissed the top of her head and her arms rose around his neck . He hung his head beside hers , silently thanking her . " I am happy . You 're here , " she assured him . She brought her hands down and wrapped them around his waist . Vincent held her tighter . And just like that , her breasts pressed against him was too much - it pushed him further , past his fear . He lifted her up and pitched forward onto the bed , kissing her passionately . Catherine wrapped her legs around him and ran her hands over his back . " Please , Vincent , I want you inside me . Please … " she urged him . " I want you - " Vincent surged hard against her , holding her tightly in his arms . His body was moving a lot faster than his brain was . He thought he should slow down , but his body wasn 't listening . And then , for the first time since he had met Catherine , he ignored his brain and listened to his body . He didn 't slow down . He went faster . The sounds coming from her just confirmed his decision . He had been wrong - so very wrong - for so long . The time had long since passed that she had needed words from him . They weren 't enough anymore . Things said in anger , things half said … so much of it misunderstood . Words , however poignant and eloquent they might be , were empty . They were inadequate . They were nothing . All of his life , he had dreamed of finding the kind of love that lived in the pages of Shakespeare and Austin , Wordsworth and the Brontës , Byron and Shelley , but poems and novels only described love - they didn 't provide it . They might have comforted him in the past , but they weren 't enough anymore . He needed more . She needed more . But their bodies - their bodies could speak the truth of their dream . Their hands could forge the paths their words could not . Their skin held blank pages ; their lips , their story . Their eyes could speak volumes and a touch , the slightest touch , could undo years of anguish and despair . To be joined , truly and wholly joined , was the realization of the dream . " Vincent , " she whimpered . " Please … " |
Librarian . Writer . Blogger at Miss Print since 2007 . Reader . Feminist . SLJ reviewer . YALSA Hub Blogger . PPYA 2015 / 16 . Amateur spy . Zen . 🦄 ← Older posts by missprint | September 19 , 2015 · 4 : 31 pm No Time for Sweetness I listen to the hall clock strike eleven while I stare at Daddy 's pocket watch open in front of me on the kitchen table . The hallway clock is five minutes fast according to Daddy 's watch . He was always fussy about it keeping good time what with being a train conductor and all . I can 't say it 's as accurate as when he was alive but I 've done my best to keep it wound since he was shot down . The hallway clock clangs its way through all eleven chimes . Each one sounding more and more like a nail in my coffin . If Mama was still alive she 'd tell me these dark thoughts are what come from plotting revenge . But all I have left of her is the rifle in my lap hidden beneath the white linen tablecloth so I suppose it doesn 't matter too much . I told Jess Cartwright to meet me here at eleven . I 'm not sure now what time he might go by . All I know is I plan to point Mama 's rifle at him as soon as he sets himself across the table from me . Mama and Daddy both would have said there were better ways to get information from a man , especially for a pretty girl like me . Especially when the whole town knows Jess has been sweet on me since we were children . I 'm spending so much time picturing Jess across from me with Mama 's rifle pointed at his chest while he tells me what I need to know , sweet as you please , that I almost miss when he actually walks into the kitchen through the back door . We never used to lock that door when Mama was alive . I won 't be here long enough to worry too hard about protecting what 's mine . Not when I know Daddy won 't be walking through that door any time soon . He pulls out a chair and I raise my rifle onto the table as he sits . " Don 't you go dying of fright on me just yet , Jess . Not before you tell me what I need to know . " I can tell he wants to jump up . Maybe run to Sherriff Pomeroy to tell him the town 's got a hysterical orphan on their hands . But then Jess sees the steady hold I have on the rifle and the coldness that 's settled around my eyes - I 've seen it myself looking in the mirror Mama kept on her dresser . There 's not a thing there to suggest I won 't shoot Jess where he stands . " Cora , I don 't know what you think you 're going to accomplish but I don 't know a damn thing you need to know . " He doesn 't bother to apologize for his language . But then we never did stand on ceremony like that . Not with each other . Not until I had to point a rifle at him to make sure I get the truth . The sun is beating through the windows and I can feel the sweat trickling down my back . Mama and Daddy always loved Arizona . Said there was nothing quite like a sunset out west . Lord , I dreamed of going back east and seeing the ocean Mama grew up next to all the way in Maine . Never thought I 'd be planning to head east without either of them . But first I need to know where to go . " I know as well as you that isn 't true , " I say calmly . I rest the rifle more steady on the table so I can lean forward and look Jess in the eye . " We both know you were on that train Jess . Daddy told your pa he 'd keep an eye on you . You had to see what happened . " Jess shakes his head so violently it sets his curly hair bouncing . " Nothing doing . You might think you know what you 're doing but your parents wouldn 't want this . Not for you . Not ever . " I clench my teeth so hard I 'm surprised they don 't snap off right in my mouth . " Daddy was shot when the train was robbed and the men who did it have a three day head start . Mama 's gone and has been for five years . There is nothing here for me . " I stop abruptly when I hear the way my voice cracks . I can 't cry anymore . I have no time for it . I ignore the hurt look Jess gives me as I continue , " But if you tell me what you saw , maybe I can follow the men back east and make sure they 're taken in . " " You and what army , Cora ? Those men are outlaws . Your mother 's hand - me - down rifle isn 't going to anything against them . Even the sheriff couldn 't mount a posse . What makes you think you can do what they wouldn 't even try ? " " No ! " I cut him off as I point the gun squarely at him . " I will not have you protect me . I don 't care what history we have or what you think you might owe my parents . I will do this . It 'll go faster with your information but I 'll do it either way . And if you don 't start talking , I will shoot you . " Jess stares at me for a long , long moment . In the silence I wonder if this is what it feels like when a bone breaks . I think it must be . " There were eight of them . The Pinkertons on the train shot three in the chaos just before your father was shot down . Six rode off but one was favoring his right side . They were heading east . I heard one of them mention Independence . That 's all I know . " I return the rifle to my side of the table before I stand . " I thank you for that . " I walk away from the table . I still have a mess of things to prepare before I can set off . I look at Jess . He 's asked me to marry him before . Last Christmas and just last week on my nineteenth birthday . He 's told people before that he was sweet on me . But I said no . Both times . Mama didn 't raise me to want to tie myself down . Daddy didn 't teach me to put my own life second to any man 's . Even one like Jess . by missprint | September 6 , 2015 · 2 : 36 pm Rain He stared at the blank computer screen . Waiting . He knew from the past three years of school that spells didn 't write themselves ; that some magician was behind every spell ever recited , every piece of magic written . He also knew that if he didn 't write and hand in a new spell in the next twelve hours he would fail Advanced Spell Creation 301 and would have to repeat his final year . He ran his hands through his hair . He didn 't remember when he 'd last had time to comb it . The way his hands stuck in the mane of curls suggested it had been a while . He pushes his glasses higher up his nose and stared again at the screen . No words had materialized on the screen . No inspiration struck . Phillip took a deep breath as he struggled to tamp down his rising panic . He 'd had two months to write this spell . All of his other work was turned in , grades submitted . Literally the only thing standing between him and his Magician Certification was this one unwritten spell . He could perform spells . He 'd memorized all of the important potion formulas . He could treat magical injuries . He was the top of his class in illusions . Phillip closed his eyes and took a deep breath . Five years of school and now it would come down to this . Twelve hours and one spell . He would have no time to test it himself before submitting it to the Graduation Board . His eyes roved over the failed spells that littered his floor . Maybe the problem wasn 't that he couldn 't write spells . What if , he could hardly believe the audacity of it , but what if he was just thinking too small ? Phillip Carton was a clever man . All of his teachers said so and many of his classmates hated him for it . Perhaps it was just time for Phillip to do what he did best . It was time to be clever . Birdsong brought his gaze to the window . It hadn 't rained in a month - nearly unprecedented in the typically rainy area where the school was based . Phillip returned to his computer screen with a new vigor as the words he would need began to form in his mind . by missprint | August 23 , 2015 · 9 : 21 pm Noticed Alice waits another week before she gives up . Then she carefully picks everything up and hides it away . Deep . She deletes the one email he wrote to her . ( Responding to one of the three she wrote to him , of course . ) She pretends to forget the bright blue of his eyes . She stops looking for him in every part of the store . She tries hard to convince herself that his hair was cut so short because he was dealing badly with premature baldness in her effort to create flaws where previously she saw none . She tries to tell herself it doesn 't hurt now . She studiously ignores the gaping hole where something more could have been . She must have imagined this loneliness and want that she can 't quite ignore and can 't quite name . In retrospect , again that painfully clear hindsight , it isn 't much of a surprise . All of her crushes - the bad ones - have been on coworkers . All of them have been disasters . Loving a celebrity from afar always seems too easy ; too much like cheating to pine for someone so obviously unattainable . So no . Her crushes - the painful ones she can only think about in quick , fleeting moments after the fact - are always real . Always too close . She never actually had a chance to call him Nick . They never said each other 's names . She knew his name after a lengthy search through the staff directory . And he knew hers after the first email . But that was all . Even now , with the bitter aftertaste of what could have been burning in her throat , there is something scandalous about thinking of him that way - a name that never was never really hers to use freely . Later , after he replied to her first email and they actually spoke to each other out loud , she learned that they had started working at the department store on the same day . It took a few weeks for her to notice him . Maybe Appliances involved more training than generic checkout . Maybe she just hadn 't paid attention . That was before any of the emails . Before she tracked down his name and found excuses to talk about the intricacies of the hierarchy between departments just to mention him . Before she called him anything but That Really Cute Guy in Appliances in her head . After that but before he replied to the first email she thought something had changed . It wasn 't exactly that he noticed her . Girls who got noticed never had these problems . They were handed phone numbers . They were asked out on dates . Alice didn 't get noticed . In particularly bleak moments she wondered if Dorothy Parker had been right about boys and girls who wear glasses . Girls Who Got Noticed never seemed to wear glasses . They didn 't have complicated crushes that lasted for months only to fall apart like a spectacularly elaborate house of cards . So no . Nick didn 't notice her . But he did start talking to her . He did , it seemed for a while at least , seek her out . But maybe that 's something any handsome guy would do . ( No matter how much she tried to drive home the idea of the premature baldness , Alice could not deny that Nick was attractive . It was a pointless exercise . ) And what attractive person doesn 't want to be adored ? He kept coming back though so maybe that was all right . After so much waiting , maybe something was going to happen . Maybe , for once , Alice ( wildly hoped ) she would actually be Noticed . She sent the second email a little later . When she was sure he was well and truly away and the crushed seemed well and truly pointless . When she thought she had nothing to lose because being brave seemed like a grand idea and pride seemed like a small thing to risk . He was transferred back the week after that . Of course . After the second email asked him out and admitted that she had Noticed him for quite some time . But maybe that was obvious all along with her lobster red cheeks and incoherent speech and the way she politely refused to acknowledge the bald spot even existed . ( In hindsight and with just a little bitterness she can admit now that the bald spot was , in fact , significant in size . ) After he came back , for a little while anyway , it seemed like something might happen . She added more cards to her card - house - crush and she thought for once it might stay strong . She made plans . She had hopes . She named things she wouldn 't usually talk about like that loneliness and want that hindsight are making her feel so acutely right now . Two weeks after he came back , three after she sent that reckless second email , and he never said a word to her . He waved the one time she passed him on her way to the register . They looked at each other quite a few times across the cavernous aisle that separated the bank of registers from Appliances . Once , she was so so sure he was going to walk over . But he never did any of those things . He never emailed even though Alice was sure it would have been the easiest thing in the world . That 's when she sent the third email . And she isn 't proud of that . But pride , it turns out , really is the first thing to go when emotions start to run high . There were a lot of things she wanted to say to him . A lot of questions to ask , if she was being honest . Instead she kept it simple and she tried to stay civil . She didn 't talk about how many hopes she had pinned to him . She didn 't admit that the idea of being Noticed seemed so much more exciting that noticing someone . She didn 't even hint at the weeks of silence . Instead she went to his email - the only one he had sent when everything still seemed about to happen - and she hit reply again . She didn 't think too hard before she wrote that he could have just said no . He could have given her that small dignity of acknowledgement . Alice waits another week before she gives up . For real this time . Then she carefully picks everything up and hides it away . Deep . She deletes the one email he wrote to her . She deletes her replies too . She doesn 't need them to remember that she tried . She doesn 't want them to remind her that it didn 't work . Eventually his eyes don 't seem quite as bright . And his hair really is short because of the bald spot . He is still handsome , perspective can only change so much , but not in a painful way . Not in a way that makes her heart ache anymore . She pushes it all aside and reminds herself that she has nothing to be sad about . She tries and succeeds when she tells herself it doesn 't hurt now . She tells herself there are more important things and she is going to find them soon . Maybe they 'll even Notice her . by missprint | July 19 , 2015 · 5 : 28 pm Letters Prompt : Write a ghost story . She sat down at her desk . She pulled out her monogrammed stationary . She uncapped her favorite black pen . She pulled her hair out of her way over one shoulder , set pen to paper and began to write him a letter . He never replied . She had been writing him long enough to know he likely never would . There was a certain freedom in that . She felt she could tell him all of her secrets . Even if he did read them , he would never judge her . Not , perhaps , because he was as perfect as she imagined , but because he would never reply . It was enough . She closed the red door of her house and walked out to the mailbox on the corner and slipped the letter inside . It was mid - afternoon with sunlight so bright her pale skin seemed transparent . She nodded to the old woman walking her dog . The woman studiously ignored her , instead keeping her eyes on the phone in her hand . The old woman 's dog growled and barked until the old woman tugged on his leash and they moved further down the street . Every day , she sat down at her desk . She pulled out her monogrammed stationary . She uncapped her favorite black pen . She pulled her hair out of her way over one shoulder , set pen to paper and began to write him a letter . She told him about her life in the drafty old house . There used to be other occupants but it had been a long time since she had seen them . They had moved , she supposed . She imagined other people might be lonely . She imagined she should be lonely . But she had her house and she had her letters . It felt like enough . She moved through the red doorway of her house . She walked out to the mailbox on the corner and slipped the letter inside . It was cloudy and nearly dusk . The darkening skies seemed to pull the light away from everything , even her already pale skin so that she almost glowed . She nodded to the old woman walking her dog . The woman studiously ignored her , instead keeping her eyes on the phone in her hand . The old woman 's dog growled and barked when she tried to pet him . The old woman tugged on his leash and they moved further down the street . The next day , she sat down at her desk . She pulled out her monogrammed stationary . She uncapped her favorite black pen . She pulled her hair out of her way over one shoulder , set pen to paper and began to write him a letter . Her pen stopped writing in the middle of her letter . She stared at it for a moment . She couldn 't remember the last time she had needed a new pen . She didn 't know if she had any others . She looked around , disoriented , and wondered for a moment if there was something she was missing . But she had a letter to write . She set pen back to paper and kept writing . " I feel lost , " she wrote , " and I 'm not sure why . Is there somewhere else I should be ? " She didn 't expect a reply from him and found no answers in her own mind . " I think I 've loved you for my entire life , " she finished before signing her name . The red door offered no resistance as she passed through . She walked out to the mailbox on the corner and slipped the letter inside . It was late by then . She had been delayed by the pen running out of ink . She didn 't remember getting a new one , but she had the letter in her hand so it must have been fine . There was no old woman and no dog . She found she missed them . She slid the letter into the box and drifted back home . It was too dark to see the eye peering at her from behind a living room curtain . She would have ignored it if she had seen it though . It was getting early and she had a letter to write . The girl in the living waited until the ghost disappeared through the front door of the house with the red door . Everyone knew about the ghost and pretended they didn 't . Her grandfather was the only one who talked about it - a legend passed down from postman to postman and , sometimes , to curious granddaughters . They said that the ghost was the woman who used to own the house with the red door . She and her husband moved there after their honeymoon . Before her husband was drafted and deployed . She told him she would write every day , a promise she kept obsessively . Even after he was declared MIA in Burgundy . Even after V Day and the search for his remains was abandoned . The way her grandfather told the story , the woman died of a broken heart . But she kept writing . Every day . Waiting for his husband to find his way back to her . If the mailbox on the corner ever seemed cold to the touch , or the air held a sharper bite , he said it meant the woman was mailing her latest letter . Sometimes her grandfather had even found an envelope in the box . No return address , nothing on the envelope save for a too - old stamp and a name . Her grandfather had never opened the envelopes because he was a professional . The girl had , though . She steamed one open to find a page so faded it was nearly blank . At the bottom , slightly darker than the other words on the page , the girl could make out the words " I think I 've loved you for my entire life . " She sat down at her desk . She pulled out her white stationary . She uncapped a blue pen . She pushed her bangs off her face , set pen to paper . Carefully , in her neatest handwriting , she wrote : " He 's waiting for you . It 's time to move on . " The girl squared her shoulders and walked up to the red door . She slipped her note through the mail slot in the front door and stayed for a moment to listen . The house was dark so she would never be sure , but she thought she saw a shadow move past the front window and heard a sound like an envelope being torn open . Lying is a tricky thing . It takes practice and just a hint of sincerity . You have to commit to the lie . Which is something bad liars never seem to understand . You have to tell a lie until you can recite it in your sleep . You have to say it out loud . You have to make every lie so beautiful it will break a person 's heart just to hear it . You can never believe the lies you tell . Not really . When you start to believe your own lies , the only heart that will break is your own . Some people have faces that pull others toward them like magnets . He had that kind of face , beak of a nose and all . Some people have voices so striking that everyone stops to listen when they speak . His voice was like that , sharp enough to cut through the noise around him and still smooth like butter . He flirted with everyone . He talked to everyone . We all knew . You probably noticed yourself . But it never felt like that . It felt like you were the only person he saw . I never knew what it meant in a book when a heroine said she blushed uncontrollably until the first time I had to stammer through a conversation with him . It 's almost imperceptible sometimes , when someone starts to matter dreadfully . My eyes began to track his movements across the bank whenever I was there . I started to watch for him . Wish for him . I didn 't even know his name . I barely had savings and little need for a bank . Still , I found excuses to be in there almost every day . Loose change to trade for bills . A quick deposit when the ATM had a line . Inquiries about new account options . Any reason I could take . Speaking to him was the best , of course , because it always felt like something could happen . If he was busy - or worse not there - I would finish my business and get on with my day . If I managed to catch his eye before I left all the better . He always had a smile for me and , on one sensational day I won 't soon forget , a wink . I didn 't stop to think it might mean anything . The line between fantasy and reality was already too blurred for that . I could imagine any number of sensational scenarios . It wouldn 't change the fact that he was paid to be affable and polite . It wouldn 't change the fact that he didn 't know my name . I was near the bank just after closing . Not to see him , for once . I was finishing my own shift at the supermarket - one of the few places in town that would hire high school students when I started applying that fall . I was a senior waiting for graduation to finally roll around . He caught up to me while I waited as the bus stop . Despite all of my surprise visits to the bank , I was still shocked to see him outside its walls , out from behind the big counter where all of the tellers stood . His hair was still carefully combed but he had on a t - shirt now instead of the button down shirts all of the men at the bank had to wear . It was a few seconds before I realized I was staring at his upper arms , at the curve of his neck without a collar obstructing it . " Such a proper name . " Another smile . He stepped closer to me which didn 't seem possible when he was already the only thing I could see . I had spent so long willing him to talk to me like this at the bank . It was only now , when it was actually happening , that I stopped to wonder why he would possibly have anything to say to me . " My name 's Ian , " he grinned this time , all sharp teeth and wants I couldn 't quite name . His eyes roved down to my chest for one beat too long before he finished . " Ian Johannes Abbington . " I smiled back tightly . His gaze shifted to the bus that was coming . I tugged the neckline of my top a bit higher . Not that it mattered . The shirt , I realized , wasn 't too low cut at all . I tugged on the red sweater I had in my bag , buttoning it despite the heat . As the bus doors opened in front of us , I tried to think of reasons to walk away . It suddenly felt like too much . He was too close to me . He was too happy to see me . It was too fast despite my own efforts to speed things along . A bead of sweat trickled down my back under the sweater as he gently took hold of my elbow before I could move away . I stared at him as we moved toward the bus door . The way the night might go unfolded before me . It could be everything I had wanted so badly since the day I saw him . More even , if his behavior was any indication . Or it could be a disaster . The worst mistake I would ever make . Strolling near the park should have been romantic . The perfect ending to a day of adventure and surprises . It could have been , if she let it . But she already had what she needed from him . Even without knowing each other 's names or any personal information , she already felt like he knew too much . She felt like he had come much too close . His train was first . She stood with him near the top of the stairs . She took his hands . " You aren 't going to fall for me . You don 't love me . After tomorrow you never will . " A train had come . She timed her reply with the onslaught of people . " None of this , nothing today , had anything to do with you . " She let go of his hands . " You had something I needed . I have it now . That 's all this ever was . " She moved away and disappeared down a set of stairs before he could follow . It didn 't surprise her when she found him staring at her across the tracks . Nothing about him surprised her . Not after today . She remembered when she kissed him , hours ago , probably harder than she should have . Definitely longer . She remembered forcing her hands out of his hair , her body away from his . She couldn 't kiss him now . Not with an entire set of subway tracks between them . Her glasses were dirty and she could barely see him across the platform . She knew he was upset . But she could only guess at his face . Was he angry ? Sad ? She wondered if he would look for her as she yelled back , " Because we 're never going to see each other again ! " Her train was coming . She heard the rumbling and saw the gleaming light moving out of the tunnel . He finally noticed the train a moment after her . She watched him turn toward the tunnel . " I 'll remember you ! " he called when he realized he was running out of time . " I 'll remember today and I 'll remember you ! I don 't believe it meant nothing ! " She walked into the train car . He watched her , offered a feeble wave . She put her hand against the glass and smiled at him . She didn 't know if he saw it . She couldn 't tell if he watched the train as it left the station or if he would try to follow her . He wouldn 't find her . She knew that much for certain . She left her glasses on the train when she got off at the next stop . Her vision cleared without the dirty lenses . For the first time all day she could see properly . She waited until she was in the middle of a crowd before she pulled off the red wig . Her own dark hair was already in a bun . She threw her green sweater into the trash as she wove her way through the station to a different train . She kept her purse . It had the clone of his cell phone - the one that would clear all the obstacles that stood in her way . Tomorrow night she 'd use it to buy her freedom . Then she would walk away . She would sell the phone as promised . There had never been a choice about that . But she also knew she would save the information somewhere . Just for her . He could try to look for her . Part of her hoped that he would . But he wouldn 't find her . It was much too late for that . I considered going for a brighter , more obvious dress - what if the cafe is hot and I have to take off the cardigan ? - but my only other clean dress was the yellow one from Aunt Maureen . Aunt Maureen still thinks I share her and mom 's pale complexion instead of dad 's brown skin and crazy curly hair . She somehow missed that yellow does nothing but wash me out so I look sick , sick , sick . " This book saved me life , " I wrote once . " It felt like nothing was going to be right ever again . But then this book was perfect . And slowly , so slowly , it started to feel like other things could be okay - maybe even perfect - too . I hope you loved it . I hope you 're okay . " I stared at the note in my hand and then the book before I turned to the last page . The sticky note I left was still there . It still declared that this book saved me and it was still true . " You 're welcome . " Beneath my note I wrote my address before I could talk myself out of it . I placed the book back on the shelf . Her name is Olivia and she told me her family is Mexican by way of Newark . We are both avid readers and she might be my best friend . This is the first time we 'll ever meet . The door chimes as it opens . I hear a girl shout " Lisa ! " as she runs toward me , a blur of black and purple . She crashes into me , her arms already hugging me . The man I want to kill barely spares me a glance as I pass him on the street . Violet laments the duration of our extended mourning period and bemoans the black crepes and silks that comprise our entire wardrobes . I 've reminded her several times that it is only a matter of weeks until we can transition to half mourning when she 'll be able to wear some of her precious mauves again . She hardly cares . No matter . Mourning attire suits my purposes just fine . People rarely pay any notice to a young woman bedecked in black from head to toe . Even the men keen to spot a well - turned ankle coming out of a carriage quickly avert their eyes when they see that ankle is covered by a black dress . Their eyes quickly pass over any pretty face obscured by a black bonnet or parasol . It helps , I think , that the black does little for my complexion beyond washing me out to a sickly pallor against my dark hair . The man I want to kill walks the city for most of the afternoon . I am grateful for the work boots I borrowed from Josiah and the way that they blend with the black of my skirt and petticoat . He won 't appreciate the strength of my need , or the absence of his boots , when he needs to muck out the stables . But I can hardly be blamed because Mother took the opportunity of transitioning the house into mourning to also transition my own sturdy boots into the trash . Mother claims young women of quality should always wear appropriate footwear . I would like to see Mother tromping around New York City 's cobblestones in her boots with their spool heels . At any rate I could hardly be expected to accomplish anything in such boots . Luckily Josiah is but eleven and has not yet hit his growth spurt . I only needed one extra pair of socks to make his boots fit . If I didn 't know better I would say the man appears melancholy , morose even . I linger near a window when he walks into a corner pub . The sun is setting . It is the first time I have been out near dusk without a chaperone . I instructed Violet to tell mother I was dining with the Peabodys and staying with their daughter Olivia for the evening . I can only hope the two dollars I gave her with the promise of a new jet bead purse will help to make her a better liar . My black dress blends into the shadows until I can scarcely tell where one stops and the other starts . Unfortunately it does little to help me blend in . Unattended women are not supposed to venture this far downtown , certainly not this close to the water . The anonymity I enjoyed in the bright afternoon light is quickly morphing into unwanted attention and lingering stares that make my skin crawl . Just when I begin to question the wisdom of my outing , the man I want to kill exits the pub and passes entirely too close to where I am loitering near the entrance . His eyes are glassy with drink and I sag gratefully with relief when he passes me without a second glance . I lift my skirts to my ankles so that I can follow him more quickly down the street as he rushes through the intersection . With only a rough idea of where I am in relation to the family brownstone , I can little afford to get lost tonight . I can worry more fully about how to get home after I exact my revenge . I quicken my pace again as the man begins moving east . My father was murdered eleven months ago . He was a respected banker and much loved by his wife and his two daughters . Everyone says it is a tragedy - his life shot down far too soon . No one knows why anyone would have wanted to kill him . No one knows that I was on my way to meet Father when he was shot . No one stopped him . No one , I realized later , saw him . In that moment I promised myself that I would find him and I would get justice for my father . I keep my eyes on his brown jacket now as he moves through the street . His red hair is easy to spot in the gloaming - a bright spot in the otherwise darkening night . It took months to find him , tracing his movements on that day eleven months ago by asking merchants in the area and other witnesses . I had despaired of ever finding him when I noticed him near the bank yesterday skulking from shop to shop looking for work or perhaps just gauging if anyone were tracking his movements . My vigilance was rewarded when I left the house early this morning and was able to follow him from the bank all the way downtown to here . I stop abruptly at a corner to avoid barreling into the man . I 'm not a fool . I know I cannot confront him in the middle of a crowded street . My hope , as he winds his way through the streets of the Bowery , is that I might find whatever rooming house he is calling home so that I might enter his room . I grasp my clutch in both hands . After I get him alone , Mother 's pearl handled revolver will do the rest . It is full dark now . I can only hope we are near his destination . Already my attire is drawing stares amidst the poverty of this neighborhood . Women here have no money to spare for full mourning and women who can do not walk alone at night . I am drawing unwanted attention . The part of my mind not occupied with watching the man 's progress begins to worry how I will get home in one piece much less unnoticed . The man rounds a corner and I follow quickly down an alley . The only light comes from a door that has been wedged open with a discarded brick . It is not enough to illuminate the man I have been following where he hides in the shadows . I walk into his hard chest before I realize what has happened . His hands clamp around my arms before I can think to back away . No one knows where I am or what I had planned today . Not even my little sister Violet . For the first time since I began my search , I realize I have been the worst kind of fool . The man turns me so that we are both closer to the light . I am surprised when I see that his eyes are concerned and not at all glassy after his time in the pub . Instead his gaze is shrewd . His hold on me loosens when something like recognition passes across his face . I waste no time reaching for my clutch . The effect is somewhat ruined by the way my hands shake as I pull Mother 's revolver out of my clutch . " You killed my father . " I raise the revolver until it points to his chest . " You don 't know anything about me , " I say as I fumble with the hammer on the back of the revolver . Much to my horror it catches on the lace of my glove . He stares at me a moment before he easily palms the revolver . " No one would argue that point , " he says with a shake of his head . He returns his focus to me . " My name is Cormac Breen . Your father had reason to believe his life was in danger and he hired me to provide some measure of protection . " " I dare say you 've been out of work for the better part of this year then , " I snap . " And I will need that revolver back , Mr . Breen . My mother will miss it . " I hold out my hand for the gun . " Let 's just say I hadn 't heard about the elder Miss Dupree 's temper . As to the matter of my employ : Your father paid generously and I dislike failing . I have been conducting an investigation into your father 's shooting . " " It would , " he says with a nod . " Which is why it 's fortunate that I was only moonlighting for your father . " He lifts the lapel of his jacket to show me a badge . " It 's actually Detective Breen , if you would be so kind , Miss Dupree , " he adds with a smile that is entirely too flattering to his overall countenance . He takes a step closer so that now I am the one against a wall . He has an excited gleam in his eye as he answers my question . " A police detective can only go so far in your family 's world . Particularly an Irish one . You , however , have no such barriers and have already proven yourself an adequate investigator . Since you are so keen to avenge your father and clearly have no regard for your personal welfare in the process , I may be persuaded to accept your assistance so that I can keep my eye on you and assure that another tragedy does not befall your family . " I place the revolver into my clutch again before I reply . I already know my answer . I suppose I 've known since Detective Breen told me what he was really doing . I suspect he knows as well . Local children measured their height against how far they were from it and their bravery by whether they could climb to it . Teenagers at the high school north of town passed along the superstition that touching the bicycle 's tire could bring good luck . The high school to the south believed touching the same tire would give you a broken heart that no love would ever mend . Mrs . Doyle claimed the bicycle belonged to her sister . That she left it chained to a tree before running away in the middle of the night to pursue an acting career in Hollywood . But everyone knew Mrs . Doyle 's sister ran away with a newspaperman with a nasty temper and a drinking habit to match . Everyone knew they eloped and died in a car crash before any kind of honeymoon . The only person who might really remember was Paula Putnam - the oldest woman in town . Busy with her wealth and whatever being ninety - nine might involve , Paula Putnam kept to herself . She did not visit anyone . She did not invite anyone into her mansion . The only time she was seen in town was every Founder 's Day . The pub had an ongoing pool for when Paula Putnam would finally die . Odds were recalculated and bets renewed once she made her appearance . Some people wondered if she would ever die . Paula Putnam did not waste her breath on idle conversation . But every year at the Founder 's Day dinner she would tell anyone who would listen about waiting at the tree every night for five years to meet her sweetheart . He rode his bicycle over from the neighboring town - one hour each way , she said - just so he could gaze into her bright eyes and try to steal a kiss . For years he told Paula Putnam that he would marry her . For years Paula Putnam told him she was too young to marry anyone , especially a handsome young man with a fine bicycle and little more to his name beyond striking violet eyes . But then the story got strange . Paula Putnam did get older eventually , as people are wont to do . Her bright eyes got sharper , her face thinner and suitors came calling from all around . But Paula Putnam 's thoughts stayed with the handsome young man and his fine bicycle . Paula Putnam didn 't notice it at first . It 's hard , she always said , to notice changes in a person when you see them every day . But then Paula Putnam turned twenty - one and that called for parties and dinners and such that she couldn 't get away even for a moment to meet her sweetheart by the tree . Paula Putnam saw her sweetheart one more time beneath that tree . She always said it wasn 't the same that final time . She always said that absence doesn 't always leave a heart aching although even those who never knew the full story understood that part for the lie it was . Paula Putnam ended the story the same way each year late into the Founder 's Day dinner . With her walking away while her sweetheart watched from the tree . She looked back once , she said , and saw him there watching . The moonlight cut through the night in such a way that his brown hair seemed to glow red and even with an entire path between them , she saw the hurt in his unusual violet eyes . Paula Putnam never saw her violet - eyed sweetheart again but the bicycle stayed there . Paula Putnam told the story as if the bicycle were a reminder of her beauty and her discriminating taste . Nothing more . She would not allow herself to consider what she knew she would never have again . No one ever knew if Paula Putnam could be trusted . Most people thought she could not . Most people were certain her Founder 's Day story , as it came to be called , was just a story . A way for an aging woman to remember what it felt like to be beautiful and young with her entire life ahead of her . Still , everyone wondered about the bicycle in the tree . For years and years they wondered . Like so many things that become a part of town tradition , the bicycle and the tree started to blend in until it was part of the larger backdrop of the town . Sometimes people would walk by the tree , look up , and remember the strange stories . When Paula Putnam died the local paper published her story . People talked about it for a while . But nothing lasted forever ; not rumors or stories and certainly not memories . Covering violet eyes or darkening brown hair to black were easy things in this modern age . It was harder , he found , to erase a previous century 's behaviors . It was harder to change a dialect more commonly associated with another time . Aside from which the colored contact lenses always made his eyes ache . Gabriel was used to waiting . He had gone entire decades doing nothing else and would likely do so again . He waited for Paula Putnam to stop telling her story about her violet - eyed sweetheart with his fine bicycle . When it became obvious she would never stop , he waited instead for her to die . Many years ago Gabriel 's tutor told him once that legends rarely knew they would live forever in myth or song . They were just ordinary people , he had said , often leading ordinary lies . His tutor told Gabriel every subject of every legend was dead and gone long before their stories were told . If anyone had passed Gabriel they would have noticed the cut of his trousers was a bit sharper than most off - the - rack clothes found in the area . They might have thought his coat a bit out of fashion as he walked toward the cemetery , his hairstyle wrong . Odd . They may have wondered why he stared so intently at Paula Putnam 's tombstone . But it was raining and Gabriel was the only one outside . He preferred it that way . Gabriel had needed to wait longer than he expected to make this trip . The carved name on the tombstone not nearly as sharp as he would have liked . He brushed moss away from the top corner while he said his goodbyes . He placed a ring box in front of the grave . She deserved more but he had nothing else to give . He remembered the night he left it chained to the tree . Remembered when the tree began to grow around it and pull the bicycle up off the ground . Gabriel had watched it often , from a distance , over the years . The same way he watched Paula Putnam Staring at it now he remembered her . She was the prettiest girl in town , no one denied that , but she was also the smartest . She was the one Gabriel loved without quite knowing how much it would hurt . It would be many years before he learned to consider consequences so he courted Paula with wild abandon despite being eight years her senior - with flowers and late - night confessions , with stolen kisses that lasted long than would be deemed proper even now in this modern time when women wore trousers and skirts above their knees . Paula Putnam had been meeting Gabriel under that tree for five years when she turned twenty - one . Gabriel was used to watching for small changes so even before that night he noticed how Paula Putnam had aged and grown . He never realized until that night how Paula Putnam might notice some things as well . Staring at him under the too - bright moonlight she saw his unlined face and its open admiration . She saw that he looked exactly as he had when they first met those five years ago . She asked him what it meant , of course . If he had laughed at it or shrugged her question away , things might have gone differently that night . Except he had no answers . He had no reassurances beyond his love and a ring she would never see . Gabriel 's eyes stayed on the bicycle as he remembered the fear in Paula Putnam 's eyes as he tried to explain , to tell her it didn 't matter . Paula Putnam was the prettiest girl in town , no one denied that , but she was also the smartest . She knew better than Gabriel himself how much staying with him would cost . She knew letting him go would be nothing compared to getting older and watching his beautiful face stay exactly as it was . Paula Putnam left him with his bicycle under the tree . Even with an entire path between them Gabriel knew her bright eyes were already turning away . He walked away too , leaving the bicycle behind - another reminder of what was lost to him . Legends could last for lifetimes stacked one on top of each other . But memories only lasted as long as you let them . Gabriel , for all that it hurt , knew he would remember Paula Putnam for a very long while . But only when he wanted to because Gabriel had lived long enough to know when it was time to move ahead to new places and to new people as well . Nodding once he turned his back on the tree and the bicycle and walked on , pulling his hat down against the thickening rain . Gabriel had seen a great many places and done a great many things . Now that he had said a proper goodbye to the girl he might have married and the life he might have had , he planned to do many more . by missprint | April 15 , 2015 · 7 : 35 pm Little Women Stories is back ! After a long absence , Nicole and I have decided to resurrect Little Women Stories . We 'll both still be blogging at The Book Bandit 's Blog and Miss Print , respectively , but we want to also use this site to hone our creative writing . |
I welcome all my family and dear friends to my place . This year has been a different one for me . And it is posted here in this blog . Along with the fun things that I get to do with the boys . The things that I get to make . The people I get to meet along the way . Life has been so very good to me . As always I have been blessed over and over . Please read and enjoy the musings of my life . My next project was going to be the quilt for PJ , but the beloved child informed me last night when I picked him up that he would be attending the lock - in at church tonight . Ok , so that is one less child that I have to deal with tonight . Eric and I can start a puzzle or something . Or maybe even play some video games . So , I thought that he could go and have some fun with his friends from school and church . I had to stop and think what he needed to bring with him , pillow , blankets , pajamas , toothbrush . But with it being so cold here lately , I don 't think his short pajamas will be of much assistance to him . Now what ? I know , make his lounge pants . But I didn 't have anything done , pattern not cut out , material not iron , hadn 't read the instructions , nothing . Oh it was gonna be a busy night . First of all , I wanted meatloaf for tonight , and the best thing for me to do was to make it last night , but I had to go out and get bread crumbs . Then help Eric with his homework , help PJ with his extra vocabulary , math corrections , spelling , and whatever else needed to get done . Not to mention that I had to help clean up the mess from where Eric made biscuits . It was just too much to do for all of us in a matter of hours . But we all got done and I found a spot to cut the pattern and then pin the pants . I followed the instructions with mass confusion , but once I got the inside seams done and had my hands on it , I figured it out . The way that these pants were made they didn 't have an outside seam , just the inside one . So , I had to make them differently than what I was used to before . Got them put together , and then create the waistband . Not too hard , I sat and watched the debate while pinning that . At 9 : 48 I got up from the couch , turned the iron on , set up the board and was pressing the area that was to be sewn . At 10 : 05 , I was sitting at the machine sewing the waistband . At 10 : 15 I found some elastic , pinned it and started working that through , until the pin decided to open in the middle of the waistband . NUTS ! I had to open that up Posted by I know that Eric is attempting to do all the chores , but I also know that there is a lot to be done . So , if he helps just a little bit , it would make it easier on me to do things with them and to get on my sewing machine to make , well , things for them . I don 't expect Eric to do everything , I never did ask for that , I only asked for a little help . Anyway , about a year ago , maybe more , I spotted this pattern in a magazine . It was too cute . I figured that I can do this , maybe . Yes , I can do it , it is only squares that are sewn together , anyone can handle that . So , I found the main fabric online and ordered it . Since that moment in time , my machine decided to go bust . I was so excited when the fabric came in , but there was nothing that I could do but wait . Eventually , I did forget that I had the pattern until PJ reminded me . Well , I got my machine for Christmas and since I have taken it out , it hasn 't left the kitchen . There are 3 things that I would like to get done shortly . One is this quilt that PJ has be patiently waiting on for about a year . So , I do believe that this is on the top of the list . There is also a pair of flannel lounge pants that PJ would like to have . Does he need them ? No , but Eric is making his own pair , so , of course PJ wants his own pair . And then there are the curtains for the kitchen , I have plenty of the material that I covered the chairs with last year . So , I have my work cut out for me . But in the long run it is worth it . My family and my home reap the rewards ! This past week I decided that I needed to get some of the other fabric for this quilt . I am just a beginner , so when a pattern says tonal and mottled , I have no clue . I think that tonal is what it says , tone on tone . But the others , well , I really don 't know . And I was not gonna bother my neighbor with that , so I just took PJ to Walmart and had him pick out what he thought would be good . After all , it is his quilt , he needs to have some say so in what goes in it . I had gone to the older Walmart earlier in the day , and their selection wasPosted by I got home from work last night , dreading of all the stuff that was needed to be done . You know , dishes , wash , sweeping . All of it . But I got a surprise that I didn 't expect . Earlier in the day I had asked Chuck to help me make a checklist for the boys in what they can do to help out around the house . Yes , I have complained several times about them not doing anything at all , or passing the buck , and then I end up doing it . I got tired of hearing the lies how they don 't make the messes , the other makes it and they just won 't clean it up . No matter , in the long run , I ended up with the mess , the cleaning and got tired of hearing the stories . So , I thought with Chuck 's managerial experience that he could help with a checklist for both of the boys . Not something that is everyday , but with things that need to be done weekly , and nightly . I forgot that his computer is not working right and he couldn 't do it for me . Well , I got home last night and was shocked by the greeting that I received from Eric . " I made a chart . For the next 6 weeks I am overtaking all the chores . " Why , well his birthday is in 6 weeks and he wants money to buy a PSP . " I have the list on the fridge , and I am gonna do this to help you out . " Now , I orginally thought that Chuck put him up to this . Nope , he didn 't . Eric got home from school and went right to his room , did his homework and then started on that . He came out of his room , showed his dad and explained to him what he was planning on doing . Chuck told him that if he did everything like he was planning on doing that he would pay him $ 30 for the job . Ok , that is far enough . Sweeten the pot a bit . Now , PJ is a little upset with all of this . His chores have now been taken away by his brother . Ok , I can fix that . There is more than one room in the house . I am sure keeping his room clean and wiping down the sink is something that he can do . I am not gonna sit around and have them do everything . It is the little things that seem to pile up , that get looked over , that never get done . Those are the thiPosted by PJ saw this on TV not too long ago , and he is begging me to make it . Chicken - Mushroom Quesadillas1 tablespoon canola oil 1 large onion , chopped ( about 2 cups ) 8 ounces white button mushrooms , ( about 3 cups ) ( I don 't prefer the mushrooms ) 3 cloves garlic , minced 2 cups cooked chopped skinless , boneless chicken breast ( 1 breast half ) 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon chili powder 1 teaspoon dried oregano 2 cups baby spinach leaves , sliced into ribbons 1 / 2 teaspoon salt 1 / 4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper 4 ( 10 - inch ) whole - grain flour tortillas 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese mix or Cheddar 1 / 2 cup salsa 1 / 4 cup reduced - fat sour cream Heat the oil in a large skillet over a medium heat . Add the onions and mushrooms and cook until the mushroom water is evaporated and they begin to brown , 5 to 7 minutes . Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more . Add chicken , cumin , chili powder and oregano and stir until all spices are incorporated . Add spinach , salt and pepper and cook until spinach is wilted , about 2 minutes . Lay 1 tortilla on a flat work surface and sprinkle with 1 / 4 cup shredded cheese . Spoon 1 / 2 chicken and vegetable mixture on top of cheese , then top with an additional 1 / 4 cup cheese . Top with another flour tortilla . Heat a large nonstick skillet with cooking spray over medium heat . Carefully place 1 quesadilla in pan and cook 3 minutes . Using a large spatula , gently flip quesadilla and cook an additional 3 minutes until lightly browned and cheese is melted . Repeat with second quesadilla . Slice each quesadilla into quarters . Place 2 quarters on a plate with 1 tablespoon sour cream and 2 tablespoons salsa . It sounds good , I may have to make it this coming week . I love stuff like this I have had this material for many years . I initially bought it to make a dress for Chuck 's neice , Kaitlyn . But I didn 't know what I was doing , I didn 't want to bother anyone with it , and then my machine decided that it was gonna go a little crazy with the bobbin area . So , needless to say , I never got started on it . Part of it , may be a timing thing too . There is so little time for life anymore . And my problem is , I love to sew and do things like that , that when I don 't get to do it , I sorta get disappointed that I didn 't make the time for it . But then I have the boys and spending time with them is more important than any craft or quilt . So , I have to choose what is priority . So , taking things in steps to make them is the way that I have to go . Of course , starting one project at a time is the key right now . One day I will have the time to do this stuff , so I have to have my priorities in order . It always amazed me how someone can take a piece of material and do something with it . I am in forever awe of people that can make beautiful clothing for themselves and their family . Or my neighbor that has the time to run to quilt store after quilt store to get material . And then make these quilts that are just amazing . I am just happy that I have gotten just a few done , and only one is in my house . I would love to do that stuff , but I don 't have the time to run to all the stores everywhere . And in the process of raising 2 boys , I simply don 't have the energy to sit for hours on end cutting and creating . For me , that takes time . PJ 's quilt took me 3 years to get done . I did have a crappy machine , so that was part of the problem . Back to the material that I purchased many years ago . You already know that I stumbled upon it not too long ago . So , I figured that since there is only one little girl in my life , that I would make it for her . I made the vest , trimmed the material , hemmed the skirt , cut the larger patterns for a purse . I did all that I needed to do . I got the purse done . Isn 't it just too cute . I have sewn a pocket inPosted by I am so tickled with my new sewing machine . I just love it ! It is a simple machine , nothing fancy , I am quite happy with anything at this point . I don 't need anything that I can 't figure out , as long as I know how to work the stitches , I don 't care . I made the curtains for the bathroom , and I am really pleased with them and the way they turned out . It has been so long since I have sewed anything that I thought I would be a little rusty , but I did just fine . And with a machine that works right , well , things have a tendency to go smoother . Well , several years ago I found some material to make a dress for one of Chuck 's neices . I couldn 't figure it out at the time , I didn 't have time , and it sorta got put on the back burner . I found it the other day and I thought that since I do have a new machine that I will attempt to make this little dress for a friend of mine . I got everything put together and I think it is rather cute . See , the inside is lined with bears too . Now , I did have a time with this . I do believe that I did something wrong somewhere , so I had to release some seams and get it to look somewhat right . I know where there are a few problems , but no one else has to know anything . I have all this material for the skirt part and I am just waiting on a measurement to finish off the dress . I decided that since I do have so much left over I am going to make a purse . So , I cut the strip that has the alphabet on it and made a strap for the purse from that . And then I am going to cut 2 bears and the excess blue and have a purse with lining . I do wish that I had a girl to sew for . Not that it isn 't nice to make the boys things , but still , they don 't care for the frilly stuff , of course . So to make anything really cute is out of the question . I would like to get this done shortly and send it off as a birthday gift . I can 't wait to see the finish product . I think I will have a hem in it so that way the only thing I have to do is gather and sew it all together . I am thinking about ribbon to tie the top shut . Because I still donPosted by It snowed ! Yes , it snowed ! ! ! I am so excited that it snowed . If you haven 't figured it out yet , it snowed and I just love , love , love snow ! I lived in New Jersey for 22 years . I loved the winters up there . Yes , they were rough , but the snow was great . I didn 't care if we had snowdays , I was one of those very strange children that actually liked going to school . We lived 2 blocks from the ocean and for us to even get 6 inches of snow was a miracle , but we would sit out there with a ruler and wax the sled getting ready for the snow . It is a part of me and I love it . Fast forward about 100 years , I am here in southeast Tennessee . Why ? Well , that is beyond me . But I am here and I don 't mind for the most part living here . But what I do mind is that we don 't get a lot of snow . So , when it does snow , I am absolutely beside myself . I am like a big kid , I never had the chance to be a kid , so I make up for it now in life . It started snowing last night about 6 or so , we just got done with our walk , and I noticed on the windshield that it was snowing . Not much , but just enough to notice it . I got home , parked close enough to the MB to where the windshield won 't be covered in the morning and then it started . I was sitting on the couch , looking out the window and the flakes were getting bigger and multiplying by the minute . Oh it was so pretty . I was just too excited . So , I called for PJ to come outside and just look at it , I was tickled . It was snowing ! Eventually , I had to take pics . Only to prove to people that it does snow down here , although occasionally . So , we are watching the news and the weather updates and they are saying that it will snow for a while , it was not sticking to anything but the grass , and that the sleet then rain was to move in . Ok , even though it was just a little bit of snow , it was still snow , and we got it . It started to rain before we even got in bed , so I knew that it would be gone by morning . They had already several school closings before 10 and there was that feeling that we would have no school eithPosted by I have had a day from , basically , hell . Yes , I know what I said , and I really don 't care right now . It all started last night . The boys and I went for our short walk . We got done and got in the car . Started it up , backed up , and then it started . The engine light flashing , the car sputtering and jerking , the get up and gone had just left town . I drove it home and got out , oh my goodness , the smell of rotten eggs was everywhere . Inside the car and eventually inside the house . It was that bad and yes , it was GROSS ! So , I decided to start it up again , and it ran just fine . I was hoping that was all there was to it . Nope , got up this morning to take Eric to school . Backed out of the driveway and went on our way . Then it happened . I got to the red light and it started the same thing that happened last night . The sputtering , like it wasn 't getting enough gas , the engine light flashing , the jerking that it was causing . I was sitting at this light praying that it would change so I can get to a turn around and head back home . I made it home , parked in the yard , and told Chuck what was going on . We thought that since it doesn 't have quite 50K miles on it , that it should be covered under warrenty . But that means to find a good tow company , one that will not rip the bumper off the car type company , contact the insurance company that way I will be reimbursed for the tow bill , contact VW of Chattanooga and find out what needs to be done . First off , I parked the car in the yard the wrong way and boy did I get yelled at for it not being parked the right way . All I wanted to do was get home , I could care less how it was parked . I had a kid in the car and I had to crossover a busy intersection to get this said child to school . So , really now , do you really think that I was thinking about how a car is parked in the yard ? Nope , could care less at the moment . Get Chuck up and tell him what was going on , asked about a tow company and then I get this , I hate your car . I just go on my way , get PJ up , get his breakfast ready , get my lunchbox rPosted by I finally got my new sewing machine out . Now , I know I got this well before Christmas , it was my gift from the boys . But I could not use it until after Christmas . Nuts ! I wanted it , I was like a kid , couldn 't wait to use it . Yes , I know it is 3 weeks since Christmas , and I finally took it out of the box to do something with it . I had looked at it , and I read the manual , so I knew what to do . But Saturday I took it out , made a bobbin , threaded the machine and decided that I was gonna sew . And there was no one standing in my way . I bought material when the store in town was going out of business . I knew that I wanted to do something in the Master bath , but I wasn 't sure of what I really wanted to do . I knew that that nasty wallpaper would have to come down . Ok , we got that done . That was the easiest wallpaper that I have ever taken down . The boys pitched in and in no time that pieced together patch job was taken down . I am now left with a cream color bathroom with some holes that needs to be filled and sanded . That will have to wait until Frebruary before I can get to the painting . And the color , well , I am not really sure yet what color I want in there . I am picky about it , because I have to live with it . And I would rather do it right the first time then have to go through that all over again . So , I have this material that I just loved . And it was all about finding the time to make something that is worth while . I started with this , you have seen it already : Now the daunting task of using my imagination and what I wanted to do and how much work was to be put in it . I got this far and thought about stopping , but I have a plan , yes , I have a plan on what I thought would be good to make this a completed project . I have made curtains before for Eric 's room and a shower curtain for the other bathroom , so I really didn 't want to do something along the same line . But it turns out that I did something similar to Eric 's room . Although on a much smaller scale . This was much easier than 80 " curtains that I made for Eric 's room . TrPatti This question was posed to me by my beloved son of 12 years . Now he knows exactly how old I am . He knows the hour and the minute that I was born . He asked , I told him and on my birthday he generally greets me at that spefic time with a ' Happy Birthday Mommy ! ' So , he knows how old I am , but for this one reason only , he just had to ask . On Wednesday he got home from school and called me . He told me all about his day and then proceeded to do his chores . About 45 minutes later I get this call : " Hi Mommy . " " Hi Eric , what is up ? " " Well , I was watching Nick and there was a commercial for Shirley Temple . Do you know who that is ? " " Of course I know who she is . Why ? " " Well , I was just wondering . I saw a commercial for her and I was wondering if you knew who she was . Did you like her ? " " Yes , I did . I know the songs and the movies , all if it . Why ? " " You know the songs and the movies ? " " Why sure I do ! That is what I grew up on . " " Ok , and exactly how old are you ? This stuff is in black and white . This stuff is pretty old . I can 't believe you know all about her . " " Eric , I am not THAT old . It was a fun time when she came on TV and we would watch them as a treat . " " Well , I saw a commercial , and I thought you would like the videos . Do you think you would like them ? " And it goes on from there . But it was quite funny for him to ask me how old I was . Or more like Exactly how old I was . They don 't understand that we only had 3 channels to watch , there wasn 't that much on FM radio , so we listened to AM . We didn 't have a colored TV until I was about 12 . I grew up on a B & W tv , just like most everyone else of my generation . He loves to hear stories of when we were growing up . And , of course , there are some that I won 't tell him , some that I can 't tell him , or some that I would prefer to erase from my own memory . But I look at him when I tell him about my childhood , what I can remember of it , and he looks at me in awe , like it was really cool to grow up like that . Ok , there are somethings in my childhood that was really neat , but the rest , well , it was Posted by Ok , I have read things from some of my dear friends about how they will be cutting out the Rice - a - Roni , the boxed mac and cheese , basically anything that comes in a box that has to be rehydrated . I understand why and I am moving away from that junk too . It isn 't good for you , there is no reason in the world why we have to have processed foods in our lives anyway . So , due to the enlightening of my friends , I thought I would share this recipe that I have made on several occasions . I have to tweak it a bit , but when you try it the first time , you will make your own adjustments . My family loves it , they enjoy that there is so much there to have leftovers for lunch . 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts , about 2 pounds totalFinely ground sea saltFreshly ground black pepper1 / 3 cup extra - virgin olive oil6 ounces spicy dried Italian sausage , cut crosswise into 1 / 8 - inch slices ( I use Italian sausage , I don 't care for anything dried , and it gives a great flavor ) ( quartered if large ) 1 pound large shrimp , peeled and de - veined3 1 / 2 teaspoons Spanish paprika , divided2 tablespoons whole fresh oregano leaves1 cup finely chopped yellow onion1 / 2 cup finely chopped celery1 / 2 cup finely chopped carrot3 cups arborio rice6 cups chicken stock1 small can ( 12 ounces ) peeled crushed tomatoes ( or 1 pound fresh tomatoes , peeled , seeded or quartered ) 1 teaspoon saffron Pepperoncini , for servingRemove the tenderloins ( small muscle on the underside ) from the chicken breasts . Cut the chicken breasts in half lengthwise . Cut all the chicken into 1 1 / 2 - inch pieces . Season with 1 1 / 2 teaspoons salt and 1 / 2 teaspoon pepper . Heat the oil in a large ovenproof pot over high heat . When the oil is almost smoking , add the chicken . Cook until well browned on 2 sides , turning once , 6 to 7 minutes total . Add the sausage to the pan . Cook for 10 seconds . Season the shrimp with 1 / 2 teaspoon salt and 1 / 4 teaspoon pepper . Add the shrimp to the pan , stir once then cook for 2 to 3 minutes . Stir in 1 1 / 2 teaspoons paprika and the oregano . Pour the mixture onto a baking sheetPosted by We all have suffered losses in our lives . It is very hard to go through the death of a loved one . I don 't care if you didn 't care for either one of your parents , when they are gone , they are gone . And even though you may have separated yourself from them , it still hurts . But when death comes quickly , it seems harder to deal with . Any death is hard on anyone that has a heart . A little over a year ago , a dear friend lost her 18 yr old son to a very tragic car accident . This young man was every mother 's dream . Never caused any problems , was always well behaved , never gave them anything to worry about . Typical kid in the aspect of not listening or cleaning the room , but other than that , he was an excellent student , very responisible , very polite and mannerly , athletic , basically a well - rounded child . And he was a child that the parents should be extremely proud of . And they were . He was an only child , loved very deeply by his parents , admired by his friends , recognized in the community . He worked at the local grocery store , so the boys not only saw him in church but they would also insist on seeing him when we would go shopping . They had a blast with him , PJ would attempt to wrestle this kid that was 11 yrs older than him . It was funny . To this day , they still miss him dearly . I was shopping at the store where he had worked and I spotted his dad . So , I decided to chat with him for a few minutes . Asked how he was doing , he told me that it is hard , but he realized that he had to get on with life . He misses his son dearly , they were a very close family . I then asked about his wife . Instead of the good hours and the bad hours , she has gotten to the point that there are good days and bad days . A great improvement from when I saw her last year at this time . She went back to work in August , after taking the rest of the year off . But they moved her from the HS where she worked , where he attended and put her somewhere else , to make her feel comfortable about working . The HS was full of too many memories for her , and she couldn 't Posted by My mom turned 75 today . Isn 't that neat ! I know when I turned 25 I was a quarter of a century , it was a big deal . I haven 't hit the half way mark yet , but my mom has officially hit three quarters of a century . And she is having a time with this one . I called her with a Happy Birthday greeting and then proceeded to mention to her that she was three quarters of a century old . She laughed and told me that this was a rough one . But she is getting on with the day . Now , I call her mom , because she has been the single most influential woman in my life . And trust me , I have had plenty of woman in my life . Some not even worthy of the air that I breath . But , mom , well , she is a wonderful woman , a terrific grandmother , and it took me a while to notice that she is a great mom . I love to pick out cards for her , but it is hard , she didn 't brush my hair when I was little , she didn 't hold me when I skinned my knee , she didn 't walk me to my first day of school . So finding a card for her takes time and sometimes tears . But I always end up with something very appropriate . I want her to know that she means so very much to me . She came into my life when I was 15 . I lived alone with my dad for 8 years , and I was bound and determined that I wasn 't going to let anyone take him away from me . Looking back , it was a good thing , a little stability is always good . But she didn 't know what she was getting into . I was a teenage girl that had zero female tendencies . A young girl that craved some kind of femininity , spoiled rotten brat that didn 't need a mom in her life . Trust me , I didn 't want anyone in my life , but I needed someone in my life . I needed someone that would put me on the right path . And that was mom . She came into a marriage , only being married one time before , not knowing all of the story with my dad , and only knowing that I was involved . She didn 't know all of the baggage that came with it . She also came into the marriage only having one son . She came into a marriage , not being accepted by a girl that was not willing to give up thePosted by We have lived in our house for 7 years now . It is perfect for us , good location , good school , close to both jobs , close to grocery stores . I love it , although it is on a very busy road . The house was our first house and we are less that 9 years in paying it off ! That a plus . I am the only one that does any kind of home improvement . I was raised by a contractor and if I didn 't learn anything by watching him , he would question me , " didn 't you learn anything ? " Of course I did , but I won 't admit to it , that would mean that I have to do everything that comes to the house , and I just don 't want to add anything else to my plate . But I have a tendency to want things done , and I end up doing it . The master bath is a small one . Trust me , it was not by choice either . The house is 50 years old , in very good condition . Granted there are things that previous homeowners did to the house that wasn 't done the right way . I go back and look and think " what moron did this ? " And it is irritating to the fact that it should be done at least somewhat right . I look at the master bath and wonder if it was added on . It just doesn 't seem to fit well in the area . Maybe the shower was added , half ass if it was . I have been meaning to take the wallpaper off and start from scratch . And that is what I did this weekend . I started pulling the paper off in little sections to see how easily it would come off . Well , just pull and get a sponge to get the glue off . This stuff was pieced together , ran up the side of the mirror , they didn 't bother to take it down to paper . Patched here and there , molding in places that didn 't need to have it , I mean just a sloppy job . I have put it off because I know my luck with wallpaper and I didn 't want to have to fix something that was going to be a major set back . I went through that ordeal in the kitchen and to this day I still look and think how can someone not fix it the first time . I have 50 years of wallpaper to pull down , talk about a mess , talk about frustrated , talk about sitting in the middle of the floor at Patti I have spent the day with the boys and I guess that is more important today than a blog . But they are on the PS2 and forgot that mom is even alive , so I am taking my turn in the Goodbyes of 2007 . Funny , just 8 years ago at this time we weren 't sure if the computers were gonna crash at midnight . Looking at 01 - 01 - 00 was strange . But as the decade has moved on , so have we . I have ZERO regrets this year . I have been so very blessed over this year . And I look forward to another year of love , blessings , FRIENDS , and of course , my beloved family . Another year older , another year of watching my boys grow and learn , another year , hopefully , with a dad that I am trying to mend past years , another year with Chuck . I don 't care for resolutions . I have never kept one . Yes , we all know that I need to take off many pounds , but I will do that little by little this year . I am not going to kill myself to keep some resolution . But I do hope that over the year I teach the boys to eat healthier , to help others more , to know that voluneteering is something that just doesn 't have to happen at Thanksgiving and Christmas , but throughout the year . It doesn 't matter if it is at the Food Bank or at the local , non - profit animal shelter . I want Eric to cook more , so , I just have to let go of the reigns in the kitchen and let him in . Ok , that may not be easy , but it will be something that is good for him , very good for him , and good for me too . Learning to let go . For PJ , I don 't know what is in store for him . He got some very nice art sets for Christmas and I know that he has a talent somewhere under there and I would love for them to come to surface this coming year . I also would like to get him more involved in theater , he loves it and he has taking a true liking for it . For all of us , eat better , laugh louder , smile more , love harder . Give back to the environment . I have to thank Johanna for opening my eyes to several things . Whole Foods , recycled stuff , giving back to the world around us instead of taking from it . I starting using the recycled Posted by Since I had been home , my days seemed to have ran together . I have asked on several occasions , " What day is this ? " Understandable , I hadn 't worked since the 14th , and I haven 't really thought about the days since I don 't have to work until Wednesday . It has been nice and I have gotten quite a bit done around the house . Chuck was off on Wednesday , so there were things whether I liked it or not that needed to get done . Like take down the crappy tree and put it by the road . Now usually when we put anything by the road , it is gone within a matter of minutes . We put my cradle out there , tried to sell it , no one wanted it . And we put our coffee table out there , both on Christmas . Well , in about 10 minutes the cradle was gone . And before it got dark , the coffee table had also gone on to a new home . Living in the area that we live in , it doesn 't surprise me that things are picked up rather quickly . So , Wednesday the tree and all the decorations came down . That is one thing that makes Christmas seem like it wasn 't 4 days ago , but more like a month or more ago . I do miss not having the tree up , but considering the cat would frequent under it to sleep , I felt that this was a better thing to do , that way I don 't break anymore ornaments . I am seriously thinking about getting a smaller type tree next year . Yes , I am acting like an old fuddy duddy , but it would be easier . Oh hell , just get one for each of the boys to decorate , that way they can do it themselves and leave me alone ! LOLSo , taking off the lights and putting up the ornaments , made Christmas go away a lot faster than I would have preferred , but it was for the better . Thursday brought the boys little friend back over . They have had a blast with Sarah , and I am so glad that they had the chance to have her over . Her mother seems to think that it is too much on me to have another child in the house . It doesn 't bother me . I enjoy it , I don 't have to entertain either of the boys at one point in time , and it gives them such good interaction with other children . She is a sweetPosted by Let 's get onto Christmas and our day . Our kids are a little different than the normal child . How so you may ask ? Well , they wake up whenever they want to , like 7 : 30 or later . They don 't go running through the house at 5 waking the entire family up , they don 't spy in the room to see if Santa came . Generally , we are up before they are . Now , that is strange ! One year it was after 8 and my dad called to see if the kids were ready for him to come over , we were all still in bed . This year was no different . Chuck and I were up about 7 , got our coffee and waited for the boys to get up . It wasn 't too much longer that they got up , and then the fun began . Let 's see what Santa got us first . Well , you saw already . PJ was so excited , Santa told him that he may leave him a special surprise and he did ! ! HE DID ! ! ! He left him 2 Webkinz instead of just one . And Eric got a surprise too , he also got 2 Webkinz . Now , yes , I know Eric is 12 , but he loves to play on the website with PJ . They interact together . And trust me there are things out there that I just don 't want him getting involved in . PJ played Santa , until the tree came crashing down again . So , he sorted and looked through and shook while he was passing things out . That is always fun . Chuck got behind the tree to get out stff for me . I had some fairly large boxes . I didn 't care if I got anything , but he went out and spent too much money , as usual . The boys are so very patient . They wait until all the gifts are passed out and then they open what they have . It is fun to watch them tear into the stuff . And oh the mess , well , that is part of it for all of us . Eric got some really nice things this year . Every year , he gets nice things . I went a bit overboard this year though . It is ok , not like they get stuff like this all the time . He got a really cool MP4 player , VT jacket , American car puzzle , movies , video games , personalized pens and pencils , and a few other things . PJ got a bunch of things too . He is my budding artist , so he got 2 art sets with sketch and drawing pads , TV HistorPosted by I have to say that our Christmas Eve tradition probably doesn 't differ from anyone else 's Christmas Eve tradition . We are a boring little family , so we don 't go too far off course when it comes to Christmas traditions . Except this year there were some changes . It is usually a very busy day , and this year was no different . I was planning on making some homemade soup for dinner , but Chuck told me that he would bring home dinner . Ok , that works for me . Because I knew what the day was bringing me . I got up that morning and we went to feed some of our friends pets . And while going there I decided to call Barnes and Noble to see if they have this one book in . Caroline Kennedy 's A Family Christmas . They had one left , so of course , I had to go to Chattanooga to get it . Now , I know that getting it after Christmas online would have been cheaper , but Chuck commented after he saw her doing an interview with Tim Russert . I just had to find it . Finally I get home ! ! ! Yes , rejoice ! Only to discover that I have to get the dough done for my dad 's cookies . Eric had a cheesecake to make and also another batch of peanut butter fudge . Now I had everything ready to go , everything softened , everything ready to get over and done with . So , I started on the cookies . As previously noted , I don 't roll things out very well . Not at all , either I have too much flour or just not enough , so I had to be very careful with what I was doing . I got it all mixed up , looked just like my grandmother 's cookies . And I put them in the fridge to chill . Meanwhile , Eric started on the cake . And of course , it had to be his way and not the right way . So , getting him to make it the right way is nearly impossible . But once he figured out that he can 't do things his way , then it went a little smoother . He got it done and in the oven , and was very patient when it came time to get it out . Except for one tiny thing , when he was looking in the oven , the door slipped and slammed . Yep , that is one cake that graciously fell . PJ has this map of where Santa will be around the wPatti For the last 3 years we have been going to the in - laws either on Christmas Eve or the 23rd to celebrate with the entire family . It seemed to make it easy when we started . I know that the boys love to sit around and play with their gifts and not have to go to Nana 's at noon . So , between my SIL and myself , we thought that it would be best to go over before Christmas . That way we all get together and have somewhat of a good time . This year we went over on Sunday . I planned on bringing the meat tray and some different salads . Ok , so I got Eric involved in this one . I didn 't want to make anything much , considering that on Monday I would be making all kinds of stuff for Christmas dinner and desserts , and my dad 's cookies . I got Eric in the kitchen and told him what he was to make and make something that would really knock their socks off . I had all the major stuff done , he had to mix and taste . He started out with egg salad , put the egg in the slicer 2 ways and got started . A little of this and that , a sprinkle of this , and a dash of that . It was very good . On to the next item for dinner , tuna salad . So , I chopped the celery , and he drained the juice and kept that aside and went on his way . Turned out to be a better tuna salad than mine ! I need to keep my secrets to myself ! LOL . And then he made something that neither one of us ever made before , chicken salad . I told him how to break up the chicken and then to go on with what he wanted in there . I put some chopped Black walnuts , and he mixed other stuff in it . Very good , and I was very proud to eat what he made . We were the first ones there , and we had to sit and wait until everyone else decided to show up . I told Chuck next year , we should just wait until the rest get there and then show up . But we waited and played football and chit chatted with them family . It was ok , thankfully everyone else showed up withen the hour . I don 't think we could handle too much more of the boredom . So , the kids sorted out gifts , opened , fought over things , yelled at each other . You knowPosted by I am a full time mom , full time employee , full time friend . I hold those that are dear to me , close to me . I treasure the friendships that I have made online , and the friend that has been by my side for over 30 years . I love my family dearly , protect my boys , kiss on my husband daily , deal with everyday issues like the rest of us . I am a real person and I blog about my real life experiences . Everything that I blog about is real and does happen . Life is too short to not be true to yourself and to others . |
Lily rolled her eyes and pushed James away from her before he tried to snog her for the fourth time - - or better yet , attempt to pull her into one of the many broom closets along the way to the Headmaster 's Office like he had already tried twice before . James just laughed and picked up her hand , giving it a kiss as he walked along with her . Just being with her was enough to make him happy . He loved having her get all flustered and edgy with him because then he got to see the pretty blush creep across her face . Lily sighed in exasperation , although her eyes were filled with humor . " James Potter ! We have to go speak with Professor Dumbledore about the Hogsmeade weekend for April . We do not have time for that at the moment . " James wiggled his eyebrows , flashing her one of his devilish smiles . He loved when she was all business and trying to pretend he didn 't have any affect on her . " You didn 't say we don 't have time for it later so I suppose I can wait . " They walked hand in hand through the seventh floor corridor and ultimately came to the gargoyles in front of the Headmaster 's Office . Lily stopped and looked up at James . " You know , sweetheart , we should also talk to him about what we were thinking of doing for graduation while we 're here . " James appeared to think about that for a moment , but frowned . " I thought we were still working some stuff out . I suppose we could mention it though . I still wanted to ask Sirius about something first . " James sighed and couldn 't help but concede . He could never resist her when she said please . She was just too sweet . " I suppose we can do it right before or right after . " James just smirked before leaning over and giving her a quick kiss on her lips , before pulling away slowly and taking in her beauty . He watched her smile and her eyes brighten , before turning his attention to the gargoyles . " Acid Pops . " When the gargoyles moved apart , he led Lily onto the steps and they walked up to the door . The door was ajar , seemingly for the two of them . Dumbledore wasn 't seated at his desk , but James and Lily walked in to wait for him to return from the back . They had a Heads meeting in about ten minutes or so . Being on time meant being early to Lily . James was just becoming accustomed to this concept . He had actually made it to class two minutes before class started the other day , and to him , this was an amazing feat . They immediately noticed the state of disarray in the office . All of Dumbledore 's things were lying around rather than on the shelves . " He must be doing some spring cleaning , don 't you think , Lils ? " She nodded as she looked around at all of the unique items . She went over to touch a few that were on his table near the front of the room . " What do you think some of these things even do ? " James came up behind her and looked at the item she was holding . " I have no idea . My parents never had a lot of these items in the house . They must be pretty rare . " Lily looked over at him as he spoke of his parents and watched the sorrow etch across his eyes . Lord Voldemort had recently taken to attacking more than just muggles and muggleborns ; he now had begun attacking powerful pure - blooded families who would not join his cause . The Potters had been at the top of the list , and his family had been killed a little over a month before . She grabbed his arm and hugged him to her to give him some comfort as he picked up a different item . " Hmmm … I wonder what this does . " Lily watched as he turned the many dials around . She gently touched one of the dials herself with her free hand . " I still think you should leave it be . " James leaned over and kissed her forehead before pushing the blue button at the top of the contraption . Before he knew what was happening , he felt a pull in his stomach . He immediately looked over at Lily with his eyes wide . Her beautiful green eyes were just as wide as his as they were pulled away like a portkey . Five minutes later , Dumbledore walked into his office from the back expecting to see his Head Boy and Girl . His eyes surveyed the room , surprised to not find them there . Lily always made sure James was on time . His eyes were immediately drawn to a contraption lying on the floor . As he bent to pick it up , his eyes lit up knowingly . " Peculiar . I knew I should have been a bit more careful with all these items lying about if I knew James would be in the office . I guess the meeting will have to wait until they return . I wonder if they 've gone to the past or the future . Interesting . It would have been more polite to ask permission . " Harry trudged along the familiar path down the seventh floor corridor up the stairs , past the Room of Requirement , and up to the gargoyles . He still felt it was Professor Dumbledore 's office , even though it was almost a year later . He sighed and shook his head to rid himself of his nostalgic thoughts . It was almost over . One more horcrux and finally Tom himself ; then , it would be all over . He knew that he had done more than a little growing up over the past year . He had accomplished more in this last year of study than any of the others . He knew he needed to beat Tom , and so he had done his best to prepare . It had taken until last month before he felt any confidence in saying he could do this . " Lemon drops . " The gargoyles didn 't move . He frowned . Professor McGonagall must have changed the password . To what , though ? Maybe she got sick of candy ; it was more Dumbledore 's thing after all . She was more of a quidditch fan . " Pride of Portree ? " Finally , the gargoyles moved . Harry just sighed in relief . He figured he would have been out there all afternoon . Or maybe the gargoyles just happened to like Harry and would eventually let him in before it got to be too long . He jumped onto the stairs and headed up into the Headmaster 's Office . He had been more than a frequent visitor over the last week . The last horcrux was rather tricky to get a hold of , as it turned out Nagini was not a horcrux . He found that out the hard way last month . He gave a quick knock on the door , and heard a muffled Professor McGonagall say come in . He opened the door gently and walked in cautiously just in case she was busy , but quickly saw she was just working at her desk . She glanced up at him as he walked in . " Let me guess , Potter , you would like to speak with Professor Dumbledore . " She smiled at him before gathering a few of her things . " It 's no trouble , Harry . Take your time . I have a few things I need to check on throughout the castle anyway . " Harry nodded as she walked outside , closing the door behind her . He headed up towards the desk before glancing up past it . " Hello , Harry . What brings you to see me today ? " " Hello , Sir . I wanted to ask your opinion on some new leads to the last horcrux . After that attack last week in muggle London , I would like to get this finished as quickly as possible , not to mention with NEWTs only two months away . I 'm slowly losing Hermione 's focus as she is beginning to worry and develop study schedules for all of us . " Harry 's brows mulled together as he thought about the places he , Ron , Hermione , and Ginny had discussed . " Well , we have already been to the obvious places like the Riddle House , the orphanage , etc . One of the places we were thinking of attempting to investigate was Borgin and Burkes . I know that it 's a shop and it would have been risky to leave a horcrux there , but I wonder if he might have hidden one there when he had been working . " Dumbledore appeared to think about this . " It is possible . He would have found out plenty of dark magic by that time and would certainly have been able to hide the item so it would never be found by the dark wizards that frequented the store . I would almost be surprised to find out if he had attempted to use magic that he was opposed to in order to conceal it there rather than the dark magic those approaching the store would know and be able to see . Interesting , Harry . I believe it would warrant a look , depending on your plan to go inside unnoticed . " " Ahhh , I 'm not so sure of that , Harry . He was not in his physical form then . He would have been too weak to create a horcrux in that state . " " Well , so far , there have been two horcruxes from Slytherin , the locket and the ring ; one from himself , the diary ; one from Hufflepuff , the cup ; and one from Ravenclaw , that exquisite necklace . That only leaves Gryffindor . I know you have said that the only known relic has been the sword in this room , but maybe to keep the pattern , he would hide something in Godric 's Hollow , Gryffindor 's home , since he could not get a relic from him ? " Dumbledore took a moment to consider Harry 's words . " I still am rather positive that the sword is the only known relic . Your theory about Godric 's Hollow is intriguing and would follow Tom 's way of thinking . " Harry was silent for a moment until , " There is also an alternate theory we were all discussing . Professor , do you think it possible he had not completed making his 6th horcrux when he was destroyed when I was born and did it after his return instead ? Could he have been planning on using me the night he vanished or perhaps me again in the graveyard after he came back ? My parents and myself were important based on the prophecy and it could explain the elaborate set up in the graveyard . " Dumbledore was again thoughtful . " I hadn 't considered that , Harry . It is possible that he had not made all of his horcruxes prior to his downfall . However , he did make his first horcrux , the diary , before he graduated Hogwarts . That does leave him plenty of time to make another five . " Harry shook his head . " But he would have wanted to use significant deaths for his horcruxes , Sir . I have a feeling that I would have been his crowning glory , and it would be - " Suddenly , the Headmaster 's Office erupted with a loud noise as something abruptly hit the floor near the entrance . The portraits all began making startled noises and cries of surprise . Harry immediately waved his hand around behind him as he turned himself around to face whatever danger had entered the room , thinking Expelliarmus , Petrificus Totalus , Silencio , and Wingardium Leviosa in quick succession . His eyes were angry , his hand holding whoever had appeared slightly off the ground , and only seconds had passed since the sound had entered the room . He pulled out his wand just in case he needed it and caught two wands that had flown through the air . When he raised his angry eyes to see who had somehow made their way into the Headmaster 's Office undetected , he was completely caught off - guard and his eyes widened in stunned disbelief . He stood there dumbfounded for a moment before lowering his hand and waving his wand , uttering in a rather choked voice , " Finite incantatum . " The intruders were silently staring back at him open - mouthed even though they had been un - frozen . He was completely unprepared for this as he looked back and forth between the two people in front of him . They had to be about his age and looked exactly how he had remembered them from photographs . He immediately offered them back their wands with his shaky hand . They took them from him without taking their eyes off of him . He stood back still staring , but managed to find his voice . " Mum ? Dad ? I mean , how … Wait , what ? " James felt like he was looking into a mirror . There , standing not five feet from him , was a walking replica , not completely of course , as he was also positive Lily 's eyes were staring back at him . He stared into her eyes everyday and would recognize them anywhere . He glanced over at Lily and realized she was definitely thinking along the same lines . The boy in front of them appeared rather confused , saddened , and shocked all at the same time after announcing that James and Lily were his parents and using what appeared to be an amazing amount of wandless magic . James found his voice first and yet the only thing that could come out was , " What the ? " Lily was still holding onto his arm , but now it seemed as if it was more of a support as she was squeezing it harder than she had been before . He noticed her blink a few times as if to determine if what they were seeing was actually real . All parties turned slightly when they heard a chuckle from behind the boy . James was surprised to see Professor Dumbledore in a portrait chuckling at him and Lily . His eyes would 've been shining had he been alive . " I do believe I remember this moment . " He looked over at Lily . " Spring cleaning , am I correct ? " Dumbledore continued , " Well , I do believe this doesn 't have to take so much time to figure out . You were playing with my time clock and somehow turned the dials to indicate the future . Don 't worry , Lily , I 'm sure that this was all James ' fault . " He gave her a wink . " I do admit I always wondered where you two went that day . However , I almost certainly did not expect that you would have met your future son in my office of all places . Had I known that fact , I may have modified your memories . " Dumbledore saw their eyes widen , but he just smiled . " The answer to your unasked question is no , James , I did not , or more technically will not , modify your memory upon your return . You both appeared happy albeit a little quiet upon your return so I thought that you must 've visited the past or something insignificant . But alas , the dials must 've been turned to the right rather than the left . They automatically reset to the present day after being used so I never knew . I understand that the both of you were rather serious about each other at the time this occurred so I hope it 's not too much of a shock that you two do end up together and eventually have Harry . " James looked at the ceiling like he had been thinking about that for a while , but Lily was still shell - shocked by all this information hitting her all at once . " But Sir , you 're … you 're a portrait now ! What happened to you ? " Dumbledore looked away from them and sighed . " I 'm afraid your first question is one I cannot answer Lily . A lot of things have occurred over the years . Just remember that death is but the next great adventure . " The lights began to flicker in the room . Dumbledore sighed before turning his attention to James ' twin . " Harry … . " James and Lily turned to the now silent boy and saw that his eyes had darkened after Dumbledore had mentioned his demise . He closed his eyes briefly and the lights returned to normal . He smiled sheepishly at the portrait . " Sorry , Sir . " " Not a problem , Harry . I know there are still some unresolved issues that have been left for us to deal with as to my death among other things , but we mustn 't let on anything pertaining to the future to your parents . There is too much at stake and they were not obliviated . I know this will be hard for you , but you will have to control yourself a bit . Otherwise , I may force you to obliviate them before they depart . " James was amazed at Harry 's apparent talent for uncontrolled and wandless magic . " How the hell can you do all that ? First the wandless stuff , and now the lights ! That 's amazing . " Harry turned to his father , feeling a little embarrassed by the praise . It was weird seeing them this way , even though all of his pictures of them showed them at this age or a little older . He was used to being praised by people who didn 't even know him , but his parents were completely different because he 'd never had parents who were proud of him . Of course , the Weasleys were wonderful , but they weren 't his real parents . " Well , I 've always had a lot of trouble keeping in my emotions and now , that I can control my power wandless , stuff like that happens more often because the energy is always at the surface . As for the wandless magic , I had to learn it for a reason that I can 't go into . Just know that it has helped a lot . " Lily and James both were aware that he appeared saddened by not being able to tell them too much information . They had noticed this before Dumbledore had reminded him to not say anything about the future . Dumbledore couldn 't resist responding with slight amusement , " Now , I understand why you both developed an interest in learning wandless magic when you returned . Interesting what one can learn when experiencing hindsight . " James and Lily looked at him in surprise . They both learn to do wandless magic ? Lily looked concerned at Harry . " Why can 't you control your emotions very well , Harry ? Shouldn 't being able to do wandless magic establish better control ? " Harry looked at her and into her eyes , his eyes , before looking away and sighing . He glanced over at Dumbledore before speaking . " Wandless magic takes a different kind of concentration , yes . However , I 've always had a hard time controlling my emotions in general . I believe my lack of control came from you in a way , although I cannot say exactly how without giving too much away . Just know that I 've never been a calm person . " He glanced over at Dumbledore slightly . " Have I , Professor ? " Harry gave a small laugh and an apologetic smile to the portrait . James narrowed his eyes , thinking the comment was somewhat of an insult to Lily . " What do you mean ? Your mother can control her emotions just fine . " He gave that a thought before smirking and somewhat agreeing with Harry for a moment . " Well , at least when she 's not angry at me . " Lily slapped him on his arm and gave him a stern look . Harry knew that had she been around when he had been young , he would have cowered and did as he was told with her as a mother . He interjected to clarify , " No , that 's not what I meant , Dad , although what you 're saying is probably true , from what I 've heard . I meant that she left me with her ability to love . Both she and I are able to experience and utilize emotions at a higher potential . At least , that 's what I 've come to understand . " James grinned and winked at him before getting a bit serious , " Not a problem . So tell us about yourself , Harry . If you are our son , we would like to know a little about you because it appears by the fact that the sight of us saddens you that we are no longer with you . " Harry nodded and his shoulders slumped a bit . " No , you both are no longer here . I wish I could say more , but it is for the best that you don 't know . As for me , I can tell you basic things if you like . " " Yes , really . I began playing in first year . I would explain how , but it might give too much away about my past and your future . I know you played chaser when you were here . " Harry smiled at his parents . They were so obviously in love . It was good to see them this way and have this memory of them looking so happy together . Besides being told that his parents had been very much in love , the only memory other than their deaths he had seen had been in Snape 's pensieve which did not show the couple at this point but rather when they were still at ends . " My girlfriend is a chaser for the team . She loves to fly . " Harry nodded with a grin . He waved his hand at his side and muttered a charm of some kind . A sort of transparent memory or picture of some kind focused in a square next to Harry . It was of a red - headed girl playing quidditch where she scored a goal and flew past blowing a kiss . Then it changed to her laughing in a garden . Finally , the picture rested on an image of her all done up in gold dress robes for someone 's wedding as she was standing off to the side of a bride . The pictures were all moving , but no sound could be heard . Harry spoke as he looked at the images of his girlfriend with a big smile on his face , " This is Ginny . " He looked over at his Dad with a wink , " I was told the Potters must have a thing for redheads . " He looked over at his mother who blushed . James just laughed . It sounded like something Sirius or Remus would say . He wondered if they were still around in the future , but knew he couldn 't ask . Lily pulled herself together . " She 's beautiful , Harry . You better take care of her . " Harry waved his hand and the picture vanished before looking over at Dumbledore 's portrait . He wasn 't sure if he could answer his father 's question . " Sir , was that charm around back then ? " Dumbledore nodded . " Ahhh , of course . I imagine it was around back then , as it probably came from a book in the Hogwarts library , your friend 's favorite location . Most of the library books are rather old , as we do not get many new books each year . I don 't remember James and Lily doing that particular charm around me though so I can 't be sure . " Harry nodded and looked over at his father . It was weird to teach his father how to do something magical . " Ok , the charm is ' Memoria Aspicio ' and you have to concentrate on the memory you wish to show . It is similar to the patronus charm in that the memory is the driving force behind the magical creation . However , it differs from a pensieve as there is no sound . For me , it 's like watching a muted TV . " Lily nodded at the muggle comparison while James ' brow furrowed . He immediately pulled out his wand and focused on a memory of Lily yelling at him in third year and gave it a try . " Memoria Aspicio . " An image appeared , but it wasn 't clear . Nothing could be made out . Harry encouraged him to concentrate harder on the memory . When he did , Lily began to laugh at the memory he chose of her shouting at him in the middle of the hallway for asking her out . There were other students walking through the halls giggling at the two of them , but James was just looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the whole world . Harry snickered . " Funny , Dad . " Her image appeared rather easily . It was of James sleeping in a chair much like one in the Heads ' common room . Lily smiled triumphantly over getting it on the first try . She looked over at Harry and shrugged . " This is the only time his head isn 't too big for his shoulders . " Harry waved his hand and another image appeared . First , was of a girl with curly brown hair studying over a pile of books in the library . " This is Hermione . She and I are Head Girl and Boy this year . She is the one who keeps me in line with my studies , as you can see . She is a muggleborn , like you Mum , and is top of my year . " He gave his hand another wave and the image changed to a tall , lanky red - haired boy standing moodily in quidditch robes rolling his eyes while Harry 's girlfriend , Ginny , was yelling at him with her wand out and her broom in her other hand . " This is Ron , and as you can see , he plays quidditch with me as keeper . Sorry , Dad , your memory of Mum reminded me of this memory of Gin . I hope I 'm not on the receiving end of her temper anytime soon . I 've already been there a few times and regretted it ever since . " James laughed . Lily was about to add something , but Dumbledore cleared his throat . When all three looked over at him , he sighed knowing they wouldn 't like what he had to say . " I hate to break this up , but if I remember correctly , James and Lily were not gone for more than an hour and the time is running out . I 'm afraid if you three go any deeper , information may come to light for James and Lily that shouldn 't . Harry , your destiny is too important to the wizarding world for me to let anything change the way things have come out . " Harry 's eyes saddened , but he nodded . He had to move on and finish his destiny , just as James and Lily had to finish theirs . " He 's right . As much as I wish I could change the past , it is something I can 't do . " Harry nodded . " Yes , but that is all you need to know . Professor , do you have the time clock hidden somewhere in this office personally , or do I need to find Professor McGonagall and use some clever wordplay so she doesn 't know what has happened ? " Dumbledore shook his head . " There will be no need to find Professor McGonagall . I haven 't told her yet where it is , as she has not asked and it was never necessary to know at this time . I felt it best to remain hidden . I 'm sure James and Lily will agree that it is a dangerous contraption to leave lying around . Now , Harry , you will need to go to where my pensieve was kept before it was passed along to you . " Dumbledore watched as Harry opened up the closet - like area , before looking at Dumbledore for further instruction . Dumbledore had a twinkle in his eyes . " Ok , Harry , now you will find the time clock in a rather familiar way , as you have found a room I believe your father did not even find in his tenure here at Hogwarts , a room which now is common knowledge . " Harry looked puzzled for a moment and thought for a second before smiling and turning back to the closet . He closed his eyes and thought three times , I need the time clock , and suddenly it appeared before him . James was looking astonished . " What room are you talking about , Professor ? We 've been to them ALL ! " Harry looked over at his father with a mischievous smile . " Nope , not all of them . There are actually two locations missing on that map of yours . " Harry just laughed . " Well , considering I 'm in the future , I hate to disappoint you when I say that you won 't find it . I hope you and the Marauders have fun trying to though . " Harry had to laugh at his father 's grumpy face . Lily was giggling at him too . " Sure , Dad . Since you asked so nicely . You happen to be my patronus . " Harry just chuckled . " I suppose that 's two things you have to tell Mum when you return , Dad . I figured you would have told her by now . Trust me when I say Remus won 't mind . In fact , he 'd probably tell Mum for you if you won 't . " James felt Lily 's eyes on him and he wanted to glare at Harry , but he couldn 't . He 'd seen that mischievous look in the mirror too many times for him to be mad at Harry for having the same look . He sighed . " I suppose I do . " Harry walked over to the portrait after he found out the date they left from his Dad so he could set up the clock with Dumbledore . James watched Lily as she watched Harry . He gave her a nudge and whispered , " Can you believe he came from us ? " His eyes looked sad . Lily walked over to him and gave him a hug . " It was good to meet you , Harry . Since we are gone now , I 'm glad I got to see you all grown up and happy . " Harry backed away from the two of them , fighting to keep his emotions back . He couldn 't help but smile at his Dad 's words . " I think trouble has a way of finding me . " Dumbledore smiled at the three of them . " Now , all you have to do is push the little blue button at the top while both of you touch the time clock . " He paused sadly before adding , " It was good to see you both again . " James and Lily looked at one another , looked at Harry , and then to Dumbledore . Lily sighed and wished she could take the sad look out of her son 's eyes . " Bye , Harry . I may not be your Mum quite yet , but I love you already . " Dumbledore 's voice broke him out of his reverie . He turned slowly to face the portrait , happy yet saddened by the experience . " Yes , Professor ? Dumbledore 's face furrowed at Harry 's expression . " Just because they are gone from this world does not mean they have truly left . Remember , they are always with you in your heart . Your heart is capable of so much love ; do not let this experience sadden you . You have been given a great gift to see them in such a way . I 'm glad I had no idea that this had happened . I feel this was a wonderful reminder of all the power that was left inside of you . Why don 't you come and talk with me later about the horcruxes ? I 'd still like to discuss some of the things we were discussing prior to seeing James and Lily . I think it best you go and take some time for yourself . Perhaps your friends may help to take your mind away from your sorrow . " Harry walked over to the closet and thought I need to hide the time clock three times . He wasn 't at all surprised when the time clock disappeared . He closed the closet gently before turning back to Dumbledore and nodding . " Til another time , Professor . " James and Lily landed hard and loud in the Headmaster 's Office , again causing the portraits to cry out in surprise . When James looked up , he saw Dumbledore sitting at his desk sifting through paperwork . He was smiling at the two of them with a twinkle in his eyes . " Well , I see you two have made it back ok then . I 'm afraid I was a little careless leaving all of my contraptions out in the open like that . If you had been gone any longer than an hour , I may have started to worry . " It was then that James and Lily noticed that everything had been cleaned up and hidden away . Lily spoke first . " We 're so sorry , Sir . We didn 't know anything like that would happen . " James and Lily just looked at each other with a small knowing smile , attributing to the fact that Dumbledore had not changed in the next however many years . James shrugged his shoulders , feigning innocence . " Perhaps , Professor . " James and Lily simply nodded . James grabbed Lily 's hand and led Lily through the door . They made their way silently down the seventh floor corridor , both thinking hard about everything that had just happened . Lily still was in disbelief . " Did that really just happen ? " Lily glared at him . " Harry said Remus wouldn 't care . Now , what is it already ? It can 't be that bad . I mean , it 's not illegal or anything , is it ? " James gulped , looked around and upon seeing no one , pulled her off into an unused classroom casting a silencing charm and a locking charm . " You can 't tell anyone ok ? I mean , I know you won 't , but seriously , you can 't . " James relaxed only a little . " Maybe times have changed a bit . Also , if Remus and the guys are around still , they are much older than we are now . " James nodded and looked away . " That 's where he goes every month . I 'm surprised nobody has picked up on the fact that he leaves every full moon . Well , almost nobody . " James looked as pissed off about that fact as Lily was surprised . " Let 's just say that I saved him when Sirius made a huge mistake . None of us talk about it anymore . It was something that happened last year . " There was silence for a moment . Lily was still confused and taking everything in . " But what does this have to do with a map or a stag ? Harry never mentioned any of this . " James surprisingly backed away from her . When Lily was about to question him , he shushed her . " It 's better if I just show you , Lils . " Lily looked confused , but her confusion turned to surprise when the space where James had been standing had now become a great white stag . Suddenly , everything made sense . She whispered , " Prongs ? " Just as suddenly , James was back to normal . " Yes , Prongs . Sirius , Peter , and I found out about Remus during second year . We immediately came up with the idea to become animagi to keep Remus from being alone . We mastered it during fifth year . Peter , Wormtail , is a rat , and Sirius , Padfoot , is a large black dog . " James nodded . " Nobody knows about this . We are all unregistered animagi . Dumbledore doesn 't even know , at least now . Obviously , future Dumbledore knew ; however , that ends up panning out . " Lily looked up at him , her green eyes still a bit wide . " I 'm fine . I just can 't believe all of this . Poor Remus . I had no idea . How can he go through something like that every month ? " " Now , you see why we tried to make his transformations more bearable . All three of us join him when he transforms , you see , and around us as animals , he is able to fight off the urge to kill and isn 't so destructive . He transforms in the Shrieking Shack . There is a tunnel at the base of the Whomping Willow . " James smiled mischievously . " Now , that is slightly off - topic , albeit incredibly helpful during the full moon . Sirius and I came up with it . It 's a map of Hogwarts . " Lily 's mouth dropped . " That 's how you get away with all of your tricks ! You should not have made such a thing , although I will give you props for coming up with a good bit of magic . " James laughed at her reluctant praise , but gave her a wink . " Come on , I 'll show it to you . As for getting away with tricks , you know firsthand that my invisibility cloak is a bit more useful . " Lily laughed at him . " Alright , Potter . I think I need to toughen you up then . Now , let 's get out of here before we get in some trouble for doing nothing but talking . " " Me ? Get in trouble ? No … Now , if you want to partake in behaviors that lead to trouble , by all means , feel free to take advantage … " Lily rolled her eyes , although she was smiling , and grabbed his hand , dragging him out of the classroom . " Come on , James . We 've been gone a long time . " Lily stopped and turned him toward her surprised he would even ask . " Of course , I 'm ok with that . I already know I want to end up with you . " Lily nodded . He watched her glance around the hallway , and before he knew it , she was pressing him up against the wall and giving him a good snog . When she pulled back flirtatiously , James was thrilled and surprised at the same time as he found himself drowning in her beautiful green eyes . He knew she was the only girl in the world for him . He had known it for a long time . It was especially nice knowing she felt the same way about him . " What was that for ? " It was dark out . Harry walked with a limp through the now deserted halls of Hogwarts . It was the middle of July , and it had been a glorious evening . Voldemort was gone , and he had done it . He was still incredibly sore despite his euphoria . Although he had mended most of his serious injuries himself on the way ( he hoped anyway ) , his left arm remained completely shattered as he slowly made his way through the empty castle . Everyone would be mad at him for slipping away , particularly Ginny , Ron , and Hermione , especially for not getting treated fully ; however , he had to do this now . The mental and magical exhaustion was bound to hit him soon . He slowly made his way down the seventh floor corridor that was now familiar territory , passing the Room of Requirement , and eventually stopped at the gargoyles leading to the Headmaster 's Office . No one would be there at this time . He hoped the last password he had been told would suffice . " Transfiguration . " The gargoyles immediately leapt apart , and Harry made his way weakly up the stairs . He opened the door with a simple opening charm , and proceeded to the Headmaster 's desk . The portraits were all chattering by his entry , as he was wearing a large black cloak hiding his features under the hood . He calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out a baby Fawkes and set him gently on the desk . " I will be right back , Fawkes . I promise . " Fawkes sang a shrill note in response . Harry looked up at Professor Dumbledore looking curiously at him from his portrait , and he saw the Professor frown upon seeing Harry 's scratched up and somewhat bloody features . The other portraits had stopped chattering at finding out the intruder was merely Harry . " He 's gone , and I did it , Professor . " There were immediate cheers from the other portraits ; Harry even noticed some of the portraits leave to tell others by using their other portraits hanging elsewhere . Dumbledore 's face immediately brightened . " Then , what are you doing here for ? You should be with everyone celebrating and taking care of yourself . You look like you 've been through the mill tonight , Harry . " Harry looked up at Dumbledore and reached his good hand into his other pocket and pulled out a letter , with the names Lily and James on it . Dumbledore 's eyes widened in recognition and understanding . " Ahhh . . . I trust there is nothing of significance written there that will alter what has transgressed during our future ? " Harry nodded and made his way slowly to the closet . He thought I need the time clock three times , and it appeared . He moved the dials to the left to set up the correct date he wanted , October 1 , 1981 at 2 AM . This would be about one month before his parents were to be murdered . He didn 't know why this was the date he chose . He looked up at Dumbledore and nodded . He also glanced half - heartedly at Fawkes , who trilled at him . Harry gave a small smile and pushed the blue button . He immediately felt like he had just grabbed a portkey as his stomach dropped . It happened so fast and just as suddenly , he had landed in the Headmaster 's Office with a thud . The portraits started to chatter at the intruder , but Harry gently shushed them . " I mean you no harm . " The portraits hushed , but watched on warily . Harry 's features were still hidden under his black cloak so the portraits could not tell who he was , nor would they even know him in this time . Harry didn 't care , however , as his attention was immediately drawn to a particular trill in the room . Fawkes , fully grown , was blinking at him next to Dumbledore 's desk . Harry moved over to him slowly and gently patted him . " Hello Fawkes . I 'm not sure if we have formerly met yet , but one day , when Dumbledore is gone , you find your way to me , help me through many things , and become a very dear friend to me . I was hoping you would grant me a small favor now before our time together . " When Fawkes trilled in what appeared to be the affirmative , Harry showed him the letter . " Will you please deliver this to Lily and James ? Just drop it on them as they sleep , as quietly as possible so they don 't wake up , ok ? " Fawkes gently took the letter , and Harry stepped backwards . Fawkes immediately disappeared in flames , but to his surprise , the disappearance was rather silent . Fawkes reappeared merely a moment later and trilled letting him know the act had been done . Harry thanked him and gave him one more pat before moving toward the closet where Dumbledore 's penseive was kept . He opened it gently and a pale blue , iridescent light filled the room . Harry thought to himself I need the time clock three times and caught it as it appeared . He moved the dials this time to the right and set it for the date that would be known throughout the wizarding world one day , July 12 , 1998 at 11 PM . He nodded toward Fawkes and then pushed the blue button once again . The portkey sensation was familiar , and just as suddenly as it had occurred before , he landed with a thud in the Headmaster 's Office once again . Harry reached down to pick up the time clock from the ground from when he had traveled to the past and moved to put it back . " Everything go alright , Harry ? That was rather fast . " Harry nodded and upon finishing hiding the time clock , he turned to Dumbledore with a small smile . He felt rather weak and was probably pretty pale . The trip had taken a lot more out of him than he thought it would . " Yes , Sir . Fawkes helped me out . " Both Harry and Dumbledore turned to Fawkes who was sitting peacefully on the desk . Fawkes merely trilled at the attention . Dumbledore chuckled . " He always did take a liking to you , Harry . He met you when you were about a week old , and even then , he seemed to like you . " Harry nodded with a smile , and carefully picked Fawkes up and placed him back in his pocket . " Well , I think it 's best I go , Sir . My arm and leg are killing me . Not to mention , I 'm hoping I don 't have any other serious injuries and I 'm exhausted . " Dumbledore nodded . " As you should be . Go get rested and healed up , but do come back soon . I can 't wait to hear your thrilling tale . " Harry smiled weakly at Dumbledore , whose eyes were now twinkling with what appeared to be amusement and pride . " That I will . Although Molly , among others , will force me to be in bed rest for most of the week . " Harry then proceeded out of the Headmaster 's Office and down the staircase , locking the door behind him . Now , he was finally at peace . No more Voldemort . James woke up when he heard Harry crying . He had been having a rather weird dream , or so he thought . He could have sworn that he saw a brilliant flash of fire , but he couldn 't be sure of any other details . He gently pulled himself out from under Lily , placed her comfortably on her pillow , and gave her a kiss on her forehead . He heard her mumble , but he shushed her and ran his fingers through her gorgeous red hair before going away to tend to Harry . As he opened the nursery , Harry seemed to have quieted a bit , but he was still looking around wide awake . " Hey there , little guy , did you wake up from a dream too ? " Harry just clapped his hands together and attempted to stand up and move about . James lifted Harry out of his crib and sat in the rocking chair Lily had placed in the nursery with him instead . " Oh no , mister , it 's still really early in the morning . You have to go back to sleep . " James held Harry to him and tried to get him to relax a bit . He supposed this was his fault for letting him sleep longer during his nap the day before , but Sirius had stopped by and he hadn 't seen him for two weeks because he had been on assignment with the Order ; not to mention that Lily was better at getting Harry to fall asleep than he was , although he would never admit that to anyone . " Ok , Harry , I know I 'm not your Mum , but I can get you to go to sleep too , right ? " Harry just fussed in his lap , but seemed happy to be held so James just rocked him a bit , talked about how he was going to grow up to look just like him , how he was going to have his Mum 's temper and blushing ability , and was very important to the wizarding world . After what seemed to be an hour , but was actually only thirty minutes or so , Harry had fallen back asleep . James gently laid Harry back down and walked out of the room as silently as possible , leaving the door ajar . As James crept back into his and Lily 's room , he was surprised to see her sitting up wide awake with a confused look on her face . She had her wand lit and was examining an envelope in her hands . " What is it , Lily ? Did an owl just come or something ? " Lily shook her head . " When you left , I woke up and found it lying on the comforter . Mail doesn 't come at night usually so that leaves Fawkes , but this isn 't Dumbledore 's handwriting . " James took it from her curiously as he sat down next to her . He also didn 't recognize the handwriting . " Well , if Fawkes delivered the letter , whoever it 's from is someone he trusts implicitly . " Lily frowned . " Open it . It 's addressed to both of us . It could be important . I checked for obscure charms already , and there is nothing on it but a charm to ensure either you or I open it . " James frowned as well at the mystery , but his curiosity won out . He opened the letter and gave a small gasp when he read the first line . Lily immediately pulled the letter away from him to see and also gasped at the letter . They both looked at each other sadly before laying the letter between them so they could both read it together . I 'm also aware that it being a few years after you had come to the future , you have both probably strictly analyzed anything I might have said to you and probably figured out a few things . For example , there is only one family with red hair in the wizarding world , and the Weasleys have a son named Ron that was born a few months before me and they have now just had the first daughter born within their family in seven generations , my Ginny . Looking back ( for me , our encounter occurred merely three months ago ) , I may have let on more than I should have when we met , but maybe I was supposed to . Time is a very funny thing . This has not been my sole experience with manipulating time , and I felt similarly when it occurred previously , like it was meant to be . So why am I writing to you now ? This letter is being written the night before I 'm about to do a very brave and dramatic thing , something you will already understand as you have heard the prophecy with Dumbledore . Right now , there is nothing but a bustle of people all around me . All are worried , scared , and fretting . Ginny is incredibly nervous for me even though she is trying to hide it ; she is attempting to sleep next to me almost as if to reassure herself that I 'm still here . Ron and Hermione keep waiting for me to break down or explode in front of them . They are not the only ones present ; there are many people in this room doing similar things , although I have to leave them nameless . I have no idea why I feel detached from the situation altogether . For some reason , I am not scared . I had a choice in the matter , same as Voldemort . I am choosing to act and I have no fear of the outcome because either way , I win . I will never go down before I see him fall first . If you are reading this letter , it is because I have succeeded . He 's gone , and I did it . Why am I telling you the outcome when I know that you should not know the future ? I decided that it would be better to offer you hope than to leave you without knowing , that I wouldn 't want my Mum and Dad to be worrying about the future me , and for you both to understand that if it hadn 't been for the both of you , I would not be sitting here writing this letter in the first place . Lily was crying . Even James was a bit teary - eyed . Both were in a bit of shock . James managed to choke out , " Our son just defeated Voldemort . " Lily nodded through her tears , and James immediately pulled Lily into his arms and let her cry against him as he rubbed her back . Lily mumbled into his chest , " He 's right , you know . We were worrying about him a lot . Now , we have nothing to fear because whatever happens , we know who comes out on top . I 'm so proud of him . " Lily stopped her tears and pulled away from him gently . " I think I knew Fawkes and he had a connection already . Remember when we first brought Harry to Dumbledore 's office ? " James chuckled . " I remember . Fawkes walked right up to him and just let himself be pat over and over with Harry 's little hands . He even sang a bit for him . " Lily nodded . " We had put together the Weasley connection too . I think the only thing that confused us was the fact that he could produce a corporeal patronus and talk about it comfortably like he had been doing it for years . Both you and I only managed that during seventh year . Well , that and that mystery room . " James just sighed . " I don 't know . There is just something about Harry even now that is special . He was creating magic even while in the womb . " All stories remain the property of their authors and must not be copied in any form without their consent . 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MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would come he talked them all into going to midnight mass in Greenville once and I aboutMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I haveMR . HUNNICUTT : Well it has been a pleasure interviewing you and I believe your oral history will benefit someone in the future if they are researching Oak Ridge and I thank you very much for your time . [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections . MR . HUNNICUTT : This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History . The date is October 31 , 2012 . I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Mrs . Earline Banic , 607 West Vanderbilt Drive , Oak Ridge , Tennessee , to take her oral history about living in Oak Ridge . Earline , please state your full name , place of birth and date . MRS . BANIC : July 29 , 1892 , in Gap Creek , South Carolina . He died , he died at 94 , in Travelers Rest , South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I really don 't know . My father was a very smart man to do what he was doing . He wrote very well , he was the treasurer for the Sunday School and so forth at my church and he took care of that very well and took care of his business very well , but I just don 't know about his education . I don 't know what grades he might have gone to because he was up in the way up in the country from there . MRS . BANIC : My mother went to school in Travelers Rest and she went to school as long as she could . Her father was the postmaster and she stayed home to take care of the telephone central system which was in their home and she did that until she married my father and therefore they never had phones there for many years afterward , because she got married and moved away and the central system was there and by the way ; they took that and put it in a garage at our house and a few years ago they realized that that had absolutely rotted away and they were really sorry that they had not preserved that for posterity . MRS . BANIC : I have one brother . Carroll Watson Smith and he lives now 3 miles from our old home and that is now in the Greenwood County . He lives near Furman University . He is 81 . MRS . BANIC : Yes , and he has a degree from Clemson College . He has a master 's degree from North Carolina and he has a Ph . D . degree from Maryland University . MRS . BANIC : My mother never worked until after she was married and went to work at the post office for the postmaster and she did that part time . She was paid by the postmaster himself because he wanted some more time off when it became time for them to have another assistant in the post office , and that was after the war started and my mother took the test and all the people coming home from the war were taking the test and you can imagine , my mother won and she continued in her job . MRS . BANIC : I had a very good school to attend . There was a brand new school from and it had the first grade through the 11th grade . It was all in the same building . The auditorium was in the middle and it was a very beautiful auditorium with an upstairs and we were segregated from the other end of the building and we had all teachers and I took anything that I really needed I guess to get along in this world and I had wonderful , wonderful teachers and they inspired me to , well I don 't think I needed any inspiration to go onto further things . I realize that because my family probably inspired me with all of that and I knew that somehow I would be able to go to college , and my mother that 's when she finally went to work in earnest at the post office when she was paid by the government to work there and so I knew that that 's why she was working in order to send me to college . MRS . BANIC : Winthrop College was the South Carolina College for Women in Rock Hills , South Carolina , and there were 2 , 000 people at this college at that time . All were girls and all were wearing navy blue and white . We had very fine clothes to wear to all the big opportunities to hear wonderful people speak , any of the big things that were at the college we had to dress in our navy blue and white . We had just all white clothes . We had navy suits with blouses and so forth and we all looked very nice and we 're never in there in anything else when we were having big speakers and so forth at our school , but during the day and going to school and we went to school and we had buildings for all the classes . We ate there . That was different for me to be able to eat with 10 or 12 people at a table and to learn more people but we stayed together through a year 's time and we were allowed to go back and get more food if we needed it and they made the ice cream at the college . They had their own diary and they made great big things of ice cream and they cut them in big rounds and we had plenty of nice things for dessert . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you stay there full time in a dormitory ? MRS . BANIC : I stayed in a dorm there and when the war really came to a big head , we had a lot of aviation cadets there and I would wake up in the morning to singing cadets " around her neck , she wore a yellow ribbon , she wore in the spring time " , and all that sort of stuff . Any of the army songs and we heard them and they were already up and at ' em and we were still snoozing away and I had to move from my dorm so that some of them could move into my dorm and I moved into a different one and they used a quadrangle that we had in the walkway and we can stand out and jeer at them if they had done something bad and had to walk that quadrangle where the mischievous stuff during the day ; they were aviation cadets . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you date any while you were in college ? MRS . BANIC : I dated some , I dated one of these cadets and he brought down a car and we even used his car for a while as long as we could use some stamps in order to buy gasoline and I remember sitting in the board to get a new tire , his sister was coming to pick the car up and we had to go and sit in the ration board in order to get a new tire . We had very little money , my mother sent me about $ 2 a week and that was my spending money . MRS . BANIC : A person from Oak Ridge , Tennessee , came to Winthrop College to talk to us about the opportunities here . I had been to Asheville , North Carolina , and I had been to Knoxville when I was very small , we had friends there and we came to visit them but I had never been out to Oak Ridge , but I hadn 't been that far away from home . We always had a couple of cars , maybe never a new one , but my father was so very handy that he would buy old wrecks and fix them up . I never had a license , but I did drive some around near where I live in South Carolina . MRS . BANIC : I had a friend in Spartanburg and she was a music major and you know I visited with her and she had visited me and Spartanburg , South Carolina , is not too far from Greenville . Greenville is just next door and so we met in Hendersonville on the bus and we came to Oak Ridge on the bus . When we first came we had our clothes and everything and we rode the bus up here and we spent the night in Knoxville at the Farragut Hotel and we found our way to the bus terminal that was taking people to Oak Ridge and of course we had heard from them , you know , a little bit about how to get out here . MRS . BANIC : I graduated from college in May and it was shortly after that time . In the meantime , my mother and I had been making me some navy blue things to wear along with the white blouses and so forth because Winthrop was a uniform school and everything should be those colors and so we had already fixed me a whole bunch of clothes to wear . MRS . BANIC : That was two miles from the Elza Gate but they did bring us into Mr . Tunnell building . Mr . Tunnell still owns that same building here in Oak Ridge and he is still alive and doing well . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you stayed outside until you got word to come into Oak Ridge and then they brought you through the gate , do you recall them giving you a badge at that time ? MRS . BANIC : I just know that actually we moved into a dorm near there to begin with because it took some time for us to find out . They wanted to send us to another place but there was a , in fact , they did send us to a dorm which was near Jackson Square now at the time but we didn 't stay there but a very short time . There were people there . Here we were southern girls who had a regular time to go to bed sort of speak and most of the people there were away from home and carousing day and night and I said , " I can 't live here . I got to live with some other kind of people , " so they moved us into a teachers building that housed only Oak Ridge school teachers and that was all as you leave Jackson Square going away and it was down on the Turnpike actually but it was close to the building that we first went to . MRS . BANIC : It was very nice but I came with a girl that was much heavier than I and we had a bunk bed , and of course , I never slept in a bunk bed but I knew that I was going to have to sleep up on the top bunk and we got along real well together and it was different to say the least . It was not like being in a school dorm all those years and we never really live close together in a dorm but we knew each other because Spartanburg was not too far away from Travelers Rest , about 32 miles and so I would visit her and so forth and so I knew something about her . MRS . BANIC : We had to go down the hall to shower and to the bathroom . I remember that much about those dorms . They were all wooden and they were very noisy , if the people wanted to be , and some people were working different hours and that was something that was hard to get accustom to but it didn 't bother us too bad until we sort of made up our mind . I think we did move into one other place for a little while and then we found out that there were houses where we might move . These houses were some of the largest house that they had built for people coming into Oak Ridge was a what they called they had A , B , C , and this was a D house and it was on Venus Road and we got there , they had had bunk beds in there but they had changed and put only six people into the building . She and I had a room together in one of those houses and there were other girls who were college people . We had to make our way as far as we had to make plans for our food and each of us took a week at a time and we cooked for a week , not each of us but two of us , we would cook a week at a time so there were three people , actually three pairs of people cooking . MRS . BANIC : Oh yes and the government , I don 't remember any , I don 't remember any bills for heat or anything , that was all in the rent we paid . MR . HUNNICUTT : You remember what the rent was . MRS . BANIC : No , that is difficult . I imagine that we didn 't , surely we didn 't have a washing machine . No way would we have a washing machine so we had to wash them I guess and they had some large sinks in the utility room and I guess that we took turns washing them and hanging them up . That is so far removed from my thinking . MR . HUNNICUTT : What about grocery shopping ? MRS . BANIC : That was the fun part because we were so close to the street across the Turnpike . Venus Road is not too far from what is now the Oak Ridge Turnpike and we didn 't have to go very far to a store and pretty soon we had friends who had cars . She got a friend right across the street and whom she married . It was a boy that lived across the street and so he would come by in the morning and leave us his car for the day and go to work with somebody else and so if we were , we were all working shift work but if he knew we were off for the day shift , he would bring the car . We not only learned Oak Ridge , we learned all about Knoxville . We can go back and forth in Knoxville . I knew Knoxville like a book and we could get our groceries and do what we had to do . Often times we had to walk over there sometimes to get something we didn 't have and it wasn 't too far and buses then were traveling around through but that was they would go too far away so we didn 't shop for groceries in a bus . We managed somehow . Somebody would have some friend or something who would take us to get groceries , if we didn 't have a car . MRS . BANIC : We worked all three shifts and that was an interesting thing because you had to learn to sleep in the daytime and you have nobody coming in and we were all different . Two of the girls that lived in my house , they worked way down past K - 25 at some place way down in there and they were all , some of them were they worked for , oh mercy , don 't know , they worked for somebody but anyway they were almost engineers . They were really well . They were damn Yankees sort of speak and they had wonderful positions and we were happy to have them because they were entertaining but then we had , it was always somebody to take the joy out of living because she didn 't want chicken and she wouldn 't even be in the house if we cooked chicken and that girl is still alive and lives in Minneapolis now and I will never forget it and many of these people are gone . Many of my friends are gone and some of them would move away far away and we would almost never see them and I only know of three . One lives in Pennsylvania and one lives in Minneapolis and one and that 's about it . MR . HUNNICUTT : You were also at Y - 12 is that correct ? What kind of job is that ? Describe that job . MRS . BANIC : I was put into a lab , a chemical laboratory in one of the buildings in Y - 12 . It was right down from the gate and there we met all kinds of people , which was so different from the people that we had known but we had nice bosses and they took care of us , so to speak , and then we had gentlemen friends in there , they were some of them were from far away and some of them , most of them were far away and so we got to know a whole new group of people . Of all those lives , there 's probably not very many of them around anymore but the boss man was a little bit older and he kept up with us pretty well . MR . HUNNICUTT : You recall what your job was you did when you were in a lab ? MRS . BANIC : Yes . There were interesting things to do . We were working in the uranium processing business and sort of keeping the people who were separating things from one thing from another and we had to put some things with them and shake up through a lot of funnels and then bleed them out whatever they wanted , it would come out . We would take them out and use that and we used a lot of , we had the dark room which we had to dry some of that out and , in a way it was interesting , but you never knew exactly what you were doing . Right then I did not know what we were doing but I knew it had to do with processing some stuff to find out its impurities and so forth and then I went from one place to another building when they built a bigger place and we did some of the same things . I worked in a spectrographic lab for a long time and so therefore we were doing , you know , a different type of processing the material so by then I had found out a little bit I knew we weren 't making fly swatters that 's for sure . MRS . BANIC : You know I really don 't remember an awful lot of that . You know we were still trying to get to the Oak Ridge Turnpike building and there was mud and there was this and that and the other when I first came and I was just glad to be able to get around and to go down to the tennis court dances and a few of those things for little bit of outing after we learned a little bit about the city and what was going on , but I don 't remember an awful a lot . I know there was some other grocery store people , you know people who were in different sections had their own places to shop . Lot of them didn 't go to this big farmer 's market that was up on the about where the Baptist Church and all is now . It was so different then and transportation for a lot of people was nil and they just had to get around as best they could and I remember that somebody lived near us and finally we had somebody to take us to work otherwise we had to ride a bus . MRS . BANIC : I don 't know . It began to get better and we just had to clean our shoes and we had boardwalks to walk on and mostly boardwalks and then by the time we could get across the street when it was muddy there was some more , they put up few more boardwalks so people could walk on the boardwalk and they were just regular plank boardwalks that they put down and you had to stand in line in all the grocery stores where you went , if you wanted some meat you stood forever and ever and they only had meat certain days and you had to know when they were coming and never could you buy any ice cream or anything from anybody that didn 't have the , where - with - all to keep it for a long time . MRS . BANIC : I must have because I had some friends at home who had farms and they had a lot of and they had gasoline ration stamps . In fact we used ration stamps when we were in college . I had some friends who would come and visit me and they had a car and they had tractors and they had other things at home and they would give me some of those stamps in order for us to use in the cars that we rode in with people . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you recall how the weather was , was the winters real cold and snowy ? MRS . BANIC : At times , maybe not so much at night because I guess most of the people were just single people well probably a lot of other people I just don 't remember , I just remember getting on the buses at night and going in and I remember one time at Christmas time ; the first Christmas I was working and I was , I saw that I wasn 't going to be able to go to South Carolina for Christmas . I had been there since May and I thought , " what am I going to do " and so I told them at work I would like to make my way to Knoxville so that I can get a bus to go home and I did just that , I was able to do that and I probably , I was very young so the world was my oyster and I figured that somebody was going to help me along and I did get to go to South Carolina for Christmas and they let me go at work and I asked the bosses if can be absent for a day or two and they said yes . MRS . BANIC : Well , yes , I guess , I remember going to church and the church I attended was up on top of the hill , it was up where the Jefferson Junior High School became and after maybe that was built we had been living in a dorm , we would walk up there . MR . HUNNICUTT : Chapel on the Hill ? MRS . BANIC : No , not the Chapel on the Hill , this is up above the football , the top of the hill , the football field is here now and there was a big building up there and I think that was a school building , that was Jefferson Junior High School back at that time ; it was a junior high school , maybe it was the high school but , yes , it was the high school because I remember that Clinton came to play basketball there once but I wouldn 't go up there and we had come back to the rec . hall on the way back to our dorm when we lived down there . That was after but even before we moved to Venus Road I remember all that earlier , now that I remember . MRS . BANIC : Well , I don 't remember any of the music from then but it was music that we had heard maybe at home or on the radio or something beforehand and when I was in college of course before that I knew a lot of the songs because we had dances every Saturday night . Sometimes we didn 't have anybody much to dance with but we only had to pay 10 cents to go to a movie and then we go onto wherever they were having the dance that night . MRS . BANIC : Well when the war broke out I have been asked many times where were you when everybody else was celebrating , we went to the swimming pool . We didn 't want to get into all the mess . There was a lot of young people here just loads of young people and I remember that we went to the swimming pool . It was fairly warm and we enjoyed that and we gave up all the other stuff just to be out of the way of people because people were so numerous . MRS . BANIC : Yes . There was one up where in the Jackson , one movie house in Jackson Square that I remember and later there was one in Grove Center . MRS . BANIC : Well we went over and watched . I was never a skater and I went over to later on went over to Jefferson and watched them skate once in a while and bowling in Grove Center maybe once in a while and by that time there was a lot of the big swimming pool was built . I don 't remember what year but - - MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember . I don 't remember any at Jefferson . It might have been but I don 't remember that . We were interested in going mainly to , they had some dances there at the Rec Hall and we would go in there and . MR . HUNNICUTT : Tell me about the friends that you made in the neighborhood . Did you make many friends in the neighborhood when you lived on Venus Road ? MRS . BANIC : Well we lived among a lot of young people . There were quite a few boys next door to us and I do know one of those boys that is still alive and is here now and there was a house full of girls across the street and then a house full of boys just to the left of us and we knew our neighbors besides and we lived in that house on Venus Road for and I was the 13th one to get married out of that house . There were some of the girls that already married when I got into the house . They married right away before I got there in June of , in May of ' 45 and those people were interesting people because they were from all over the country and when we got a chance with friends we would go to Knoxville and go to dinner at some of the country clubs with some of our friends and that sort of thing . MR . HUNNICUTT : Did you find they were from all different parts of the United States ? MRS . BANIC : Yes , yeah every place , every place and we did have a few of the girls got married and finally when the Chapel on the Hill was built and one of the girls in our house got married there and then another one and we helped with all the refreshments for the parties and so forth and that was interesting . I met my husband in 1946 and that was a different time for me because here I was a little Southern Baptist from South Carolina and I met a Catholic boy from Pennsylvania . The first boy in Oak Ridge , the first person in Oak Ridge that had a brand new car , he had his name on the list in Pennsylvania and this is the first car that came and it was supposed to be his sister 's car but she didn 't want a car that they sent which was a two tone green fleet line Chevrolet and when he brought a bunch of boys back to his house they had been out . They said how would you like to see a George 's new car , well , my eyes and ears pricked up because I had been riding to Knoxville on a big old bus with the big heater in the middle and having to change buses in Knoxville a couple of times to go where we wanted to eat and back to the movie and this , that and the other and now I had somebody that I could do this all in one car . What a big thing that was but then that was the problem of what is a little girl going to marry , how you are going to explain it to your parents that you met somebody you might marry . I said my mother will never accept him , but you know very a persuasive girl told her that you know this is it , you know accept me and him or not and so I remember when she was in her dying bed , she was hoping that George would come that day and help her because she was very ill and he could pick her up and move her around and my father was getting old at that time and he couldn 't do that . He couldn 't pick her up and I had to tug her around as best as I could and she loved George and even as a matter of fact when Christmas Eve would cMR . HUNNICUTT : Let 's back up a minute to 1945 when the news came out they dropped the bomb Japan where were you ? MRS . BANIC : I was in the lab and that 's the first that I knew about it at all and it was very exciting time for us because by then we realized that we had been doing something for the war effort and maybe a lot of people didn 't really know , all of the people in the lab would work so hard to do what they asked us to do and the first thing I knew they allowed somebody to go out and get some coffee and donuts , so we celebrated . We celebrated the beginning of the war and never , never had we had anything to eat in the lab before , never and that was a fun time for us . MRS . BANIC : I think so . MR . HUNNICUTT : Do you recall , did you have a telephone when you lived in the D house ? MRS . BANIC : What was a telephone ? I had a hard time getting a date with my friend because the man across the street asked me , he said " Earline , George said that he would like to take you out and would you go , " and I said , " Oh yes , I think so too , " and he said , " Well , he can 't come to see you " , and I worked shift and he worked straight days so it was quite a while . Finally he said he can 't get here when you are either working or whatever and it 's too late at night and you are already in bed . " Will you go if I take one of the girls in the house and you go with George . " I said , " Yeah , I guess that will be okay . " So I agreed to go with him for the first time then and as a matter of fact this person married the girl in my house and he is the one that used to come and leave his car with us every day to go shopping in Knoxville and he has just died here in town . MRS . BANIC : It was a one bedroom and a living room and kitchen . The kitchen was half down below ground . MR . HUNNICUTT : So you are telling me about your apartment on Waddell Circle was a two bedroom apartment . MRS . BANIC : One bedroom apartment and the window was there , so that the kids , they loved to watch me cook and they could get down on their knees and look through the window and they wanted George to entertain them . George played the violin and he played for his own amusement , their amusement I guess . Anyway he would get out and fiddle sort of anything for them and they just loved that and we had a little table that was off of the wall . It just folded down off of the wall and so the first chairs we bought , I still have and they are in my back room and they were some little metal chairs that we bought coming in from Knoxville one day and I wouldn 't give those chairs away for anything because that was a purchase we had to have on Waddell Circle . I am sure we bought something else . I am sure we bought a bed and other things but those chairs were something we had to eat on in the kitchen . MRS . BANIC : Well that was interesting because I had to have a Protestant marriage and a Catholic marriage marrying a boy from Pennsylvania , first of all , I went with George to Pennsylvania . We went all the way from here to Pennsylvania . MR . HUNNICUTT : No interstates in those days . MRS . BANIC : Yeah and then of course a nice girl from South Carolina didn 't go to a hotel with a man and that 's a whole new ball game , and so we drove and when we would stop and rest and George would get in the back seat and I would sleep in the front and we 'd take a little nap . I remember on the Lee Highway , here we were trucks going by like this , something terrible but we did sleep a little bit and we made it up there fine . I stayed at his sister 's house who is right next door to his father 's house and of course they were different for me . I even think that George 's father who came from Yugoslavia thought I wasn 't too bad because nobody had been there to cook for him since his wife had been dead , as a matter of fact since I first met George she had died . So I cooked for him on a gas stove which I wasn 't accustom to and I did , you know , everything as best as I could and that was interesting too and finally my sister in law said after we had been there , I had been married to George a little while she said this is ridiculous she said we can all eat together but never did George 's daddy want to come and eat with us , we fixed his food , but he was from the old school and he did not want to bother any of us , and so he ate by himself , but we took food to him from then on . MR . HUNNICUTT : You and George went to meet his father and the rest of his family , where did you get married ? MRS . BANIC : Well , I got married twice , I got married here at the priest house in Jackson Square . The priest lived there at that time and they had a little chapel and they had that fixed up and it was just big enough for three or four people to get in and the priest and me in the little chapel it was a little porch on the F house and something like that but it had a little porch and they enclosed that and so that is where I got married the first time . George took me to the airport and it was on a Saturday , we had a reception over at the Ridge Rec . Hall . When I got to the airport , I took off my going away suit , I knew if I arrived in South Carolina my mother would have a fit and so she , she was okay with me when I got all fixed up and wore another suit and when I got there . MRS . BANIC : No , no , no , he just took me to the airport , dropped me off , stayed with me until the plane landed but I had been going back and forth home to Greenville every time I got $ 20 together . Now you can 't get there from here unless you go to Atlanta , Raleigh and Charlotte to get there . Some friends were here recently and they wanted to go and I said you can 't do that , they said oh , yes , they were going to Knoxville and see if they can fly some other place back to Nashville I said you can 't get to Nashville from here , forget it . MRS . BANIC : Oh , yes , I was still working . I went to my bosses and I asked them if I can have two weeks , I said I am getting married twice . I am getting married here in Oak Ridge and I went to Clinton to get , went to Maddy Hollinsworth who was the county court clerk , she was an older lady , I went to her house and she sat us down and said do you know what you kids , I was 23 and George was a year or so older , do you know what you are doing . Maddy Hollinsworth is something big in Clinton they think she hung the moon and she wanted be sure that we knew what we were doing because she had taken our license home with her so that we can see her after hours because we both couldn 't get there until 5 o ' clock until they left or whatever . So then we went to his home . When I went to Greenville my mother met me and we did the things that we need to , George came on Thursday and of course we headed then to Greenville , South Carolina , to get another license because I was going to get married in the Baptist church in my hometown . My mother 's brother who was a minister was going to marry us , but when I first got there on Thursday night they were having a party for me that night and George had bought me a great big orchid for our wedding in Oak Ridge . I went home and there was this orchid , my mother said , " Take that off , you can 't wear this , " she said , " I don 't want those people to know , " and so we had a huge crowd of people and I didn 't get to wear my orchid from my first marriage but I didn 't get to sleep with George until after we got married in the Baptist church and we scattered all of our friends down in Travelers Rest , which is a small town , and no place much to stay . We scattered them among my mother 's Garden Club and church friends and everybody that I lived with and all of George 's friends that were in the wedding and all that sort of thing and we had a big crowd . MR . HUNNICUTT : I am going to mention some points of interest in Oak Ridge and you tell me what you remember about them . The Oak Terrace Ballroom . MRS . BANIC : Well I knew an awful lot about the Oak Terrace because we ate there an awful lot . After square dances here at Oak Ridge , we had a big contingent who went to the Oak Terrace on Saturday nights to eat and if there had been a big dance upstairs we ate in another room that was upstairs and that was always such a great place to be . We have been to all sorts of dances there . When big name bands came to town and they had quite a few back a long time ago and we , I don 't know for some reason we always went , we both loved to dance and we belong to another dance club here in town and we always danced a lot and round dance that we did everything in those things but being there with all those big bands was just a great thing and they had a place upstairs to eat for people who were around at that time , a real nice dinner place to eat . MRS . BANIC : I don 't remember where we stood , it has been a long time ago . I remember Marie McDonald and all those people who came and the ones who thought that they were going to get to see them and we knew those people and it was always talked about at work . MRS . BANIC : Well I guess they have , well if it had not been for them beginning Downtown rather than Jackson Square , Jackson Square continues to be pretty much like it has been all the time with the bank and there another bank is coming in there . We became a stock holders in the Bank of America and George had to call the man who ran the Bank of America and he said you are going to have to send my money over to Hamilton National Bank . Mr . Mason said , oh he called George , he said George what is wrong with Hamilton , Hamilton National came out of Knoxville and so that was the big bank here at the time and that was up in Jackson Square and he said , " George , what is wrong with our bank , " and George said , " Well , don 't you think when a man gets to buy and be a stock holder in the Bank of America that I need to change my money , " he said , " Yes , George , I think so . " So , he finally sent our money to the Bank of America . MR . HUNNICUTT : So all the years you have lived in Oak Ridge , what do you like best about Oak Ridge ? MRS . BANIC : Well I guess I was married for 53 years and you don 't live in any place that long and not like it , job or no job . But George had a very important job and he liked it so well and he was liked by so many people and I we just would never have left here . I am sure that nobody appreciated his job more and the people that worked for him . I saw a man last night he said , I have never seen any person who was as nice to the people who worked for him , I saw him at the Outback last night and he always tells me he said , George Banic was one of the nicest men I have ever seen and said he was always the same to everybody , never mean or anything to him and said that is , he said George was a real delightful man and I guess that is what we have become over the years and I have enjoyed not only my working friends who are , a lot of them are not around anymore but it has been great to be here and we have not invested in any property or anything but we enjoy the area . We have got Norris Dam and lake for entertainment and we have a little boat up there and we were there on weekends and it was , and we went there even before we got married . We did our courting on the top of the dam so we could look down and see the lights and stuff so that is one of the places where we always go , we call that our place and we are mountain people . I climbed Mount LeConte , I did everything but scale the shale and at 22 or 25 inches snow right now , you can 't even get in the parking lot so I understand today but we , there is another way now to go to South Carolina , we used to have terrible times getting across the mountains at Christmas time but we had a big heavy car other people would be in the ditch and we just went on down the mountain and I think that this is such a picturesque part of the country and all you have to do is walk out in our backyard here and look across and see the mountains behind us and know that this is really God 's world . We have got a little bit of everything . The one thing that I would like to do that I have never MRS . BANIC : And thank you . [ End of Interview ] [ Editor 's Note : This transcript has been edited at Mrs . Banic 's request . The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged . ] Your rating was saved . you wish to report : |
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